funicular means of, pertaining to, resembling, or powered by a rope or cable. It carries an Arena rating of 1356, earned across 3 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, funicular ranks #2,374 of 14,451 for Most Whimsical Words, #2,966 of 14,361 for Most Ingenious Words, #3,361 of 14,431 for Most Betrayed by Its Sound, #7,206 of 14,297 for Words That Escaped Their Books.
Why “funicular” is a great word
A railway, particularly on a steep gradient, that employs a moving cable to haul two counterbalanced cars along fixed tracks. From Latin fūniculus ('thin cord, small rope'), diminutive of fūnis ('rope, cord'). First attested in English as an adjective in the 1660s; the railway sense dates from the 19th century. Unlike a 'cable car,' which hangs from an overhead wire, or an 'inclined elevator,' a solitary cabin on rails, a funicular is a symbiotic pair, a mechanical partnership of gravity and gear. It is the rhythmic, clacking ascent through a pine forest, the paired windows framing one car's rise against the other's solemn fall, and the patient, pendulum-like certainty of its schedule—a brief, engineered respite from the exhausting work of climbing, a system where nothing ascends without something else consenting to descend.
Etymology
From Latin fūniculus (“thinner cord”), diminutive from fūnis (“rope, cord”) + -culus. By surface analysis, funicul(us) + -ar.
adj
- Of, pertaining to, resembling, or powered by a rope or cable.
- Of or pertaining to the umbilical cord.
- Having a fleshy covering of the seed formed from the funiculus, the attachment point of the seed.
- Synonym of catenary.
noun
- A particular type of rail transit system which ascends a steep urban or mountain incline, having usually two cars sharing a single pair of tracks, with the cars linked by a moving cable and an arrangement of pulleys such that the descending car assists in the hoisting of the ascending car, i.e. the two cars serve as counterweights for each other.“England's funiculars mostly hug the coast, and this is no coincidence. The development of the Victorian and Edwardian seaside resort played a central role in the uptake of funicular railways across England.”
Words closest in meaning
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