Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A track or way for trams, as in a mine.
  • noun Chiefly British A streetcar line.
  • noun A cable or system of cables for a cable car.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The earliest form of railroad.
  • noun A light or temporary railroad, as for the transportation of logs, often with wooden rails and operated by horse-power.
  • noun A gutter attached to a pool-table, dsigned to save time in gathering the dead or pocketed balls. It is now, in improved form, attached to the under side of tables used in other pocket games.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Same as tramroad.
  • noun A street railway laid in the streets of a town or city, or an interurban railway for local traffic, on which cable cars, or trolley cars, etc., are used, in distinction from an extended railway line for trains drawn by steam or electric locomotives.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun the track on which a tram (streetcar) runs
  • noun the system of cables that supports a cable car

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the track on which trams or streetcars run
  • noun a conveyance that transports passengers or freight in carriers suspended from cables and supported by a series of towers

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

tram +‎ way

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Examples

  • I sat back down defiantly, picked up my blue pencil, and circled the word tramway.

    Goodnight Nobody Jennifer Weiner 2005

  • I sat back down defiantly, picked up my blue pencil, and circled the word tramway.

    Goodnight Nobody Jennifer Weiner 2005

  • I sat back down defiantly, picked up my blue pencil, and circled the word tramway.

    Goodnight Nobody Jennifer Weiner 2005

  • An elevated tramway is built from the town to Victoria Gap, 1,100 feet above the sea.

    Nellie Bly's Book: Around the World in Seventy-Two Days 1890

  • Beyond the tramway was a grove of yellow-looking firs; beyond the grove a range of white houses with blue roofs, occupied, I suppose, by miners and their families; and beyond these

    Wild Wales : Its People, Language and Scenery 2004

  • The tramway was a cable which stretched from a wooden tower set upon a stone pillar jutting from the sea to a similar tower built upon the land.

    Triple Spies 1918

  • It was a very long line, compared to any railway that had yet been constructed; but it was still only to be worked by horse-power -- to be, in fact, what we now call a tramway, rather than a railway in the modern sense.

    Biographies of Working Men Grant Allen 1873

  • It was a very long line, compared to any railway that had yet been constructed; but it was still only to be worked by horse-power -- to be, in fact, what we now call a tramway, rather than a railway in the modern sense.

    Biographies of Working Men Grant Allen 1873

  • Although Armenian authorities said that they will apply to Guinness World Records to officially confirm that the tramway is the world's longest, they say it was primarily built for practical use.

    The Seattle Times 2010

  • Although Armenian authorities said that they will apply to Guinness World Records to officially confirm that the tramway is the world's longest, they say it was primarily built for practical use.

    Yahoo! News: Business - Opinion 2010

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