column
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈkɒləm/
enpr: kŏlʹəm
ipa: /ˈkɑləm/
enpr: kŏlʹjəm
ipa: /ˈkɑljəm/
rhymes: -ɒləm
Forms: form: columns
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”).
Senses: topics: architecture
glosses: A solid upright structure designed usually to support a larger structure above it, such as a roof or horizontal beam, but sometimes for decoration.
glosses: A vertical line of entries in a table, usually read from top to bottom.
glosses: A body of troops or army vehicles, usually strung out along a road.
examples: text: It was too hard to read the text across the whole page, so I split it into two columns.
glosses: A body of text meant to be read line by line, especially in printed material that has multiple adjacent such on a single page.
examples: text: Each column inch costs $300 a week; this ad is four columns by three inches, so will run $3600 a week.
glosses: A unit of width, especially of advertisements, in a periodical, equivalent to the width of a usual column of text.
examples: text: His initial foray into print media was as the author of a weekly column in his elementary-school newspaper.
text: 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.
ref: 2024 January 10, Christian Wolmar, “A time for change? ... just as it was back in issue 262”, in RAIL, number 1000, page 60:
glosses: 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.
examples: text: 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.
ref: 1892, James Yoxall, chapter 5, in The Lonely Pyramid:
glosses: Something having similar vertical form or structure to the things mentioned above, such as a spinal column.
topics: biology
botany
natural-sciences
glosses: The gynostemium
topics: chemistry
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
glosses: An instrument used to separate the different components of a liquid or to purify chemical compounds.
Synonyms: sense: upright structure
word: post
sense: upright structure
word: pillar
sense: upright structure
word: sile
Hypernyms: sense: upright structure
word: beam
Derived 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
columnwise
column-wise
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
pseudocolumn
pseudo-column
semi-column
semicolumn
sixth column
social column
society column
steering column
subcolumn
supercolumn
Türck's column
vertebral column
water column
wide column store