DCHP-1 Online

steel

• 1a n. railway track.

  See also: end of steel  

  • 1888-1895  (1888)  The fourth and last episode was the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway—that long, strong bright link of steel which binds the fair little island on the Atlantic coast with her bigger sister on the shores of the Pacific.
  • 1963  But even such lowly creatures as laborers . . . followed the progress of the steel the way the captain of the Queen Elizabeth measures off his daily mileage

• 1b n. a length of railway track.

  • 1909  As the steels were laid, the camp moved on from time to time, with its great crowds of men, most of them ready for a fight at any moment.

• 1c n. a railway line.

  • 1912  (1914)  The C.N.R. steel arrived in Edmonton in 1906, and the day the last rail was laid the property went for 24,000 dollars.
  • 1928  With the coming of steel it consolidated its position through becoming the terminal at which (at near-by Waterways) the steamer meets the railways.
  • 1938  From Norway House, Buck went to "Steel" at Mile 137 on the Hudson Bay Railway.
  • 1953  Since there was no radio in those days, anyone going into the bush anywhere was cut off from the outside world as soon as he left "the steel."

• 2 n. Northwest a steel drum of or for oil, gasoline, etc.

  • 1959  I asked . . . about the availability of my two steels of aviation gasoline.

• 3 n. West Coast a fish, Salmo gairdnerii, of the Pacific coast, which spawns in fresh water after two or three years in the sea.

  See also: steelhead  

  • 1961  Vedder River--[they] hooked 10 steels in high-ish, somewhat-colored water Sunday, landed only two.
  • 1967  Most Cheakamus steels are five-year, rather than the usual four-year-old fish. . . .