column
Pluralcolumns
- 1A solid upright structure built to support something above it, such as a roof or beam, or sometimes added just for decoration.
Cracks in the central column threatened the whole building.
The architects spaced the columns evenly across the facade.
Similarpillar, post, pier, upright, support
Note
The shape every other sense borrows comes from building: Middle English columne, through Old French from Latin columna, a form of columen or culmen, 'pillar, top, summit.' A classical column is divided into base, shaft and capital. It may carry a roof, an entablature or an arch, or it may stand alone as a commemorative monument. Pillar and post overlap with it, but column suggests this shaped, often cylindrical form.
- 2A vertical series of entries in a table, normally read downward from the top.
She added up the numbers in the right-hand column.
The spreadsheet's columns were misaligned after the import.
Oppositerow
- 3A block of text meant to be read line by line, especially in printed material that places several side by side on a single page.
The magazine split each page into three columns of dense text.
Her eye moved down the column, scanning each line in turn.
- 4A regular feature in a newspaper or magazine, typically an opinion piece, written by one author or a small rotating group or devoted to a single subject.
The newspaper hired her to write a monthly column on travel.
Readers wrote angry letters in response to his latest column.
Similarfeature, article, piece
Note
Here the word moves from layout to content. The space a regular writer fills became the name for the writing itself, so a column belongs to its author in a way a block of type does not. People write a column, keep one or lose one. Christian Wolmar, writing in 2024, reckons his would have disappeared without rail privatization to argue about.
- 5
- 6Something with an upright, pillar-like form or structure, such as the spinal column or a rising column of smoke.
A column of hot air rose quickly above the desert floor.
Injuries to the spinal column can affect the entire body.
Note
This sense carries the pillar's outline away from buildings and onto anything that rises the same way, extending the architectural pillar. The thing need not be solid or still: James Yoxall's The Lonely Pyramid (1892) describes "whirling wreaths and columns of burning wind" in a desert storm. In use it usually follows the pattern a column of plus a noun (of smoke, of air), while spinal column works as a fixed compound.
- 7The width of one standard text column, used to measure space in a newspaper or magazine, especially for advertisements.
The newspaper charged advertisers by the column for page space.
Her announcement filled three columns across the page.
Note
A measure rather than a block of text: advertising space is sold by width in columns and by depth in inches. The two combine in the column inch, the unit that sets the price. An ad four columns wide and three inches deep covers twelve column inches. Used this way, the word counts like any unit (three columns wide), and its size is set by the printed block of text.
- 8A device used to separate a liquid into its component parts or to purify chemical compounds.
The chemist ran the sample through a column to isolate the pigment.
Separation columns are central to many laboratory purification methods.
Note
In the laboratory, a column is a vertical tube packed with a stationary phase. A mixture is passed through it, and its components separate according to their differing affinities for that packing. The device is central to chromatography and fractional distillation. Chemists speak of packing a column and of running a sample through one.
- 9The structure in an orchid flower formed by the fusion of the male and female reproductive organs; the gynostemium.
Pollinators must contact the column to carry pollen between orchids.
In this species, the column curves downward over the lip of the flower.
Similargynostemium
Note
Botany's column is the central organ of the orchid flower, where the stamens fuse with the style and stigma into a single structure. Gynostemium is the technical synonym, and the two terms can be used interchangeably. Because this one structure holds both the pollen and the receptive surface, the whole business of orchid pollination is organized around it.
Practice
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Origin
From Middle English "columne," borrowed through Old French "columne" from Latin "columna" (a column, pillar, or post), originally a variant of "columen," contracted to "culmen" (a pillar, top, or summit). It is related to Latin "collis" (a hill) and "celsus" (high), and probably to Ancient Greek "kolophōn" (top, summit).