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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

derailleur.

A mechanism on a bicycle wheel used while cycling to move the bicycle chain from one sprocket (gear) to another, to change speeds.

10 characters3 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/dɪˈɹeɪl(j)ə/Received-Pronunciation/dəˈɹeɪləɹ/General-American
  1. A mechanism on a bicycle wheel used while cycling to move the bicycle chain from one sprocket (gear) to another, to change speeds.

  2. The entire gearset on a bicycle with such a mechanism.

Where this word comes from

Unadapted borrowing from French dérailleur, from dérailler (“to derail”) + -eur (suffix forming masculine agent nouns from verbs). Dérailler is derived from dé- (prefix meaning ‘away; from; off’) + rail (“rail”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₃reǵ- (“to righten; to straighten”)) + -er (suffix forming infinitives of first-conjugation verbs). Doublet of derailer.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.