water column

noun

plural water columns

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

Examples of water column in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The ship will also carry a 40-meter coring system for extracting deep-sea sediment samples, advanced oceanographic instrumentation, and fiber-rope lifting systems capable of operating across virtually the entire water column—from surface to seafloor. — Dea Jusufi, Forbes.com, 13 June 2026

Markos Scheer is the chief executive officer of Seagrove Oysters, an oyster farm in Alaska that uses a surface-cage system, growing oysters in bags at the top 12 inches of the water column. — Bridget Shirvell, Martha Stewart, 9 June 2026

At one point, this intelligence forms a water column, a kind of tentacle, to explore the ship. — Jenny Odell, Longreads, 2 June 2026

The device is based on oscillating water column technology, which transforms wave motion into electricity by means of a turbine. — Prabhat Ranjan Mishra, Interesting Engineering, 16 May 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1845, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for water column

• collum
• sholom
• slalom
• solemn