Word.ws English Dictionary

columbiad

columbiad noun: a form of cannon from the 19th century, mostly used for seacoast protection. It is a large-caliber, smoothbore, muzzle-loading cannon designed for launching shot or shells with heavy charges of powder, at both high and low angles of elevation.

Noun

columbiad (plural columbiads)

  1. (historical) A form of cannon from the 19th century, mostly used for seacoast protection. It is a large-caliber, smoothbore, muzzle-loading cannon designed for launching shot or shells with heavy charges of powder, at both high and low angles of elevation.

Proper noun capitalized: Columbiad

Columbiad

  1. An epic story about the settling of North America by European colonizers in the region that is now the United States of America; and its mythologized growth and development.

Forms of columbiad

pluralcolumbiads

Origin of columbiad

From Columbia (“the United States”).The term was first used for a type of cannon employed at Fort Columbus on Governor's Island in New York in 1808.

From Columbia (“the United States”) + -iad (“epic tale”). From Iliad (“the Homeric tale of the Trojan War”), from Ancient Greek Ἰλιάς (Iliás), from -άς (-ás). From Columbia (“the feminine form of America”), from Columbus (“Christopher Columbus”), from Latin Columbus (“surname”), from Italian Colombo, from colombo (“pigeon”).

Questions about columbiad

What does columbiad mean?
Columbiad means a form of cannon from the 19th century, mostly used for seacoast protection. It is a large-caliber, smoothbore, muzzle-loading cannon designed for launching shot or shells with heavy charges of powder, at both high and low angles of elevation.
What part of speech is columbiad?
Columbiad can be a noun or a proper noun.
What is the plural of columbiad?
The plural of columbiad is columbiads.

Words near columbiad in the dictionary

  1. Columbia City
  2. Columbia County
  3. Columbia River
  4. Columbia-Shuswap
  5. Columbia-Wenatchi
  6. columbiad
  7. columbiads
  8. Columbian
  9. Columbian Exchange
  10. Columbian ground squirrel
  11. Columbian mammoth

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: columbiad (page history and authors); Columbiad (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “columbiad.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/columbiad. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.