guardrail

noun

guard·​rail ˈgärd-ˌrāl 

: a railing guarding usually against danger

especially : a barrier placed along the edge of a highway at dangerous points

Synonyms of guardrail

• railing
• rail

Examples of guardrail in a Sentence

the car ran off the road, but fortunately only hit the guardrail

Recent Examples on the Web

Hugging Face said it was forced to use an open-weight model developed in China to diagnose and defend from the hack because of the closed models’ internal guardrails. — Hadas Gold, CNN Money, 6 Aug. 2026

So, can a debt collector re-age an old debt, or are there guardrails in place to prohibit those types of actions? — Angelica Leicht, CBS News, 6 Aug. 2026

Without the right agentic guardrails, leaders are essentially giving toddlers dynamite. — Rick Vanover, Forbes.com, 6 Aug. 2026

Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who won a competitive primary Tuesday and was endorsed by Khanna, has supported state and local moratoriums on data centers unless federal guardrails are in place. — Garrett Downs, CNBC, 6 Aug. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1860, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for guardrail

• airmail
• assail
• avail
• bewail
• blackmail
• cattail
• cocktail
• curtail
• derail
• detail
• dovetail
• email

Kids Definition

guardrail

noun

guard·​rail ˈgär-ˌdrāl 

: a protective railing placed along dangerous areas (as of a road)