column
nounUK /ˈkɒləm/ · IE /ˈkɑləm/
Etymology From Middle English columne, columpne, columpe, borrowed from Old French columne, from Latin columna (“a column, pillar, post”), originally a collateral form of columen, contraction culmen (“a pillar, top, crown, summit”). Akin to Latin collis (“a hill”), celsus (“high”), probably to Ancient Greek κολοφών (kolophṓn, “top, summit”).
9 senses
- 1A solid upright structure designed usually to support a…
- 2A vertical line of entries in a table, usually read from…
- 3A body of troops or army vehicles, usually strung out…
- 4A body of text meant to be read line by line, especially…
- 5A unit of width, especially of advertisements, in a…
- 6A recurring feature in a periodical, especially an…
- 7Something having similar vertical form or structure to…
- 8The gynostemium
- 9An instrument used to separate the different components…
Architecture A solid upright structure designed usually to support a larger structure above it, such as a roof or horizontal beam, but sometimes for decoration.
A vertical line of entries in a table, usually read from top to bottom.
A body of troops or army vehicles, usually strung out along a road.
A body of text meant to be read line by line, especially in printed material that has multiple adjacent such on a single page.
- It was too hard to read the text across the whole page, so I split it into two columns.
A unit of width, especially of advertisements, in a periodical, equivalent to the width of a usual column of text.
- Each column inch costs $300 a week; this ad is four columns by three inches, so will run $3600 a week.
Broadly A recurring feature in a periodical, especially an opinion piece, especially by a single author or small rotating group of authors, or on a single theme.
- His initial foray into print media was as the author of a weekly column in his elementary-school newspaper.
- I have always argued that despite my opposition to rail privatisation, I should be grateful that John Major won the 1992 election on a platform to sell off the railways, as otherwise my column would have disappeared given the paucity of things to write about.2024 January 10, Christian Wolmar, “A time for change? ... just as it was back in issue 262”, in RAIL, number 1000, page 60:
Something having similar vertical form or structure to the things mentioned above, such as a spinal column.
- The desert storm was riding in its strength; the travellers lay beneath the mastery of the fell simoom. Whirling wreaths and columns of burning wind, rushed around and over them.1892, James Yoxall, chapter 5, in The Lonely Pyramid:
Chemistry, Natural sciences, Physical sciences An instrument used to separate the different components of a liquid or to purify chemical compounds.
- Antonyms
- row
- Derived terms
68 terms
advice column, agony column, a little from column A and a little from column B, balloon column, clustered column, columnal, columnar, column density, column echelon form, columned, columniferous, columniform, column inch, columnist, columnization, columnize, columnless, columnlike, column of Türck, column shifter, column space, column still, column stinkhorn, column vector, column-wise, columnwise, control column, cortical column, cybercolumn, dodge the column, encolumned, engaged column, eruption column, fifth column, flying column, fractionating column, Hathor column, hypercolumn, immunocolumn, intercolumn, intracolumn, letter column, macrocolumn, microcolumn, minicolumn, Morris column, multicolumn, multiple-column, nanocolumn, personal column, positive column, postcolumn, precolumn, pseudo-column, pseudocolumn, semicolumn, semi-column, sixth column, social column, society column, steering column, subcolumn, supercolumn, Taylor column, Türck's column, vertebral column, water column, wide column store- Hypernyms
- beam