underground railway

1. 1.

   secret aid to escaping slaves that was provided by abolitionists in the years before the American Civil War

   SynonymsUnderground Railroad

   Broaderescape

Questions about underground railway

What does underground railway mean?

underground railway means "secret aid to escaping slaves that was provided by abolitionists in the years before the American Civil War".

What is another word for underground railway?

Close synonyms include Underground Railroad. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is underground railway a common word?

underground railway is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.