To force someone to do something quickly without giving them time to think, or historically, to transport someone by railroad.
From 'railroad,' combining 'rail' (the metal track) and 'road' (pathway). The verb 'to railroad' originally meant to travel by rail, but evolved by the 1880s to mean forcing something through hastily, borrowed from the image of a train that can't be stopped once it starts moving.
The shift from 'to railroad' meaning 'travel by train' to 'to force someone's hand' is a great example of how metaphors become new meanings—once people started using 'railroaded through' for unstoppable actions, the original meaning faded away!
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