steamboat
Americannoun
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
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
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The extension of canals and steamboat travel to some extent complemented, rather than competed with, the road’s livelihood.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 24, 2026
The classic cartoon stars the beloved mascot as the whistling, rascally pilot of a steamboat floating down a river.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 2, 2024
So did Jean Sherrard and I. Indirectly, the needs and wants of us and our collective forebears are why this section of the Snoqualmie River hasn’t seen a paddle-driven steamboat in well over a century.
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 15, 2023
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
As America expanded by building canals, steamboats and early railroads, demand soared for wage labor in factories, transportation and among office workers like clerks.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 19, 2025
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
It contains multiple anachronistic details, such as a reference to steamboats and regulations for the care and feeding of livestock being transported through the city.
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 8, 2023
Today, Vicksburg is a destination for faux steamboats and tour buses half-filled with aging Civil War buffs and gamblers drawn to its storied battleground and mildewed casinos.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 2, 2023
“Up in the Dakotas, some of them farms are so big, they have their own stern-wheel steamboats to carry their wheat to their own elevators at Fargo,” I told Dad.
From "The Teacher’s Funeral" by Richard Peck
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.
