steamboat
Americannoun
-
steamboats
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of steamboat
Vocabulary lists containing steamboat
The Industrial Revolution - Introductory
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The Industrial Revolution - Middle School and High School
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Example Sentences
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The steamboat reversed this flow, reshaping the antebellum economy decades before the railroad.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 24, 2026
The idea, in its early conceptions, included much of what would later make its way to Disneyland — a train, a steamboat and less detailed versions of Main Street and a Frontierland.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 13, 2025
The charge is a pre-Civil War statute colloquially known as seaman’s manslaughter that was designed to hold steamboat captains and crew responsible for maritime disasters.
From Seattle Times ● May 1, 2024
Four years after completing her studies, Flora married Edwin Patterson of Ripley, Ohio, and they settled in nearby Cincinnati where he was a steamboat pilot.
From Scientific American ● Jan. 26, 2023
For example, in 1837 the Mandan Indian tribe, with one of the most elaborate cultures in our Great Plains, contracted smallpox from a steamboat traveling up the Missouri River from St. Louis.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
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The number of steamboats on Western U.S. rivers grew to 740 by 1850 from 17 in 1817.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 24, 2026
Bucky would tell you that the hotel was built in 1847 and guests originally traveled by steamboats to enjoy their holiday by the bay.
From Salon ● May 4, 2023
Treichel describes a wide variety of creations from the children, ranging from harbor ships to steamboats.
From Seattle Times ● May 1, 2023
In the mid-1800s, as white settlers moved west, steamboats chugged up the lower Colorado River, paddlewheels turning.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 26, 2023
A fish market was coming to life along the avenue, and the shouts of merchants mixed with the caws of seagulls and rumble of steamboats coming in to port.
From "Dactyl Hill Squad" by Daniel José Older
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.