Meaning & use
rail fence
A fence built from split wooden rails stacked in a zigzag pattern without vertical posts.
See it in a sentence
The old rail fence still zigzagged across the field, gray and weathered with age.
Farmers once built rail fences quickly because they needed no dug postholes.
A note on using this word
A rail fence is held together only by the way the rails interlock, so it needs no nails, posts, or wire.
Words with a similar meaning
split-rail fenceworm fence
Choose a synonym to suit the sentence. Meanings can overlap without being identical.
Another way to use it
2. noun
A simple transposition cipher that writes a message in a zigzag pattern across several lines to disguise it.
Students learned to encode a short message using a basic rail fence cipher.
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