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

And that’s just one way microplastics can move up and down the water column and settle in the mud. —Matt Simon, WIRED, 4 Sep. 2019

On bright sunny days, schools of baitfish will move to the top of the water column to feed on phytoplankton. —Kubie Brown, Outdoor Life, 3 Oct. 2024

Really giving it a ton of action and letting those tentacles do the work up in the water column seems to generate a lot more bites. —Shaye Baker, Outdoor Life, 8 Aug. 2024

For the deep-dwelling sharks, that meant move up in the water column to a more oxygen-rich zone or die. —Popular Science Team, Popular Science, 31 July 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1845, in the meaning defined at sense 1