Other forms: columns
A column is a regular opinion piece written by the same person each week, and the person is a columnist. Write a column, a gardening column, her column appears on Tuesdays.
The older sense is architectural: a column is an upright pillar holding up a roof. From that come the printing sense — a vertical block of text on a page — and the spreadsheet sense, where columns run down and rows run across. And a column of soldiers or vehicles is a long line moving forward. Every sense is the same shape: something long and upright, or long and in single file.
1nouncolumnA regular article by the same writer.
“He has written the column for eleven years.”
2nounuprightAn upright pillar in a building.
“The roof rests on eight stone columns.”
3nounverticalA vertical block of text or figures.
“Put the totals in the last column.”
4nounlongA long line of people or vehicles.
“A column of lorries stretched back two miles.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
column is an upright or a vertical block.
Latin columna meant a pillar, from a root meaning a hill or a projecting thing — the same root as column, culminate and, at a distance, hill. Every sense in English is a pillar seen from a different angle: standing up, printed down a page, or marching in single file.
Proto-Indo-European
*kelH-
Latin
columna — a column, pillar, post
Old French
columne
Middle English
columne
English, today
column
Built from
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 (“top, summit”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA