water column

noun

plural water columns

Definition of water column

1 : a vertical expanse of water stretching between the surface and the floor of a body of water Shallow feeders, sea lions work the top 600 feet of the water column for hake, rock-fish, herring, sardines … and squid, but opportunistically capturing anything that happens by.— Downs Matthews Only a few animals of the water column above would have died and settled into the sediments below during the short time when the mudslide was coalescing into a layer of sediment in the stagnant basin.— Stephen Jay Gould

2 : a vertical pipe with valves and spout for delivering water to a locomotive tender

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