waterway
Americannoun
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a river, canal, or other body of water serving as a route or way of travel or transport.
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Shipbuilding. (in a steel or iron vessel) a depressed gutter at the edge of the deck inside the bulwarks, used especially when the decking is wooden.
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a channel for vessels, as a fairway in a harbor.
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of waterway
before 950; Middle English; Old English wæterweg. See water, way 1
Explanation
Any place you can navigate by boat is a waterway, whether it's a river, a stream, or a canal. The city of Venice, Italy is famous for having waterways instead of paved streets — to get around there, you'll need to hire a gondola instead of a taxi. Routes that boats routinely travel are waterways, and they're most likely to be referred to that way when those boats are transporting goods. Maritime waterways are made up of straits and canals connecting two large bodies of water (such as oceans), and inland waterways include long rivers like the Colorado and the Nile. The 3,000 mile-long Intracoastal Waterway is made up of bays, inlets, and sounds, hugging the Atlantic coast of the U.S. down to the Gulf of Mexico.
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.
See Examples For:
For analysts at JPMorgan, led by Natasha Kaneva, the question isn’t whether the key waterway will stay open, but about who will get to dictate the terms of its operation.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 17, 2026
About 20% of the world’s oil transited the waterway before the Iran war began.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 16, 2026
The sheriff’s department has not been able to determine how the man entered the waterway, but no foul play is suspected at this point.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 16, 2026
The seasonal bloom extended into the Bosphorus, the narrow waterway that runs through Istanbul and links the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 15, 2026
Crumbling brick warehouses, oil storage tanks, rusting cranes, and gritty factories lined both sides of the waterway.
From "The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics" by Daniel James Brown
The Black Sea, which lies between Europe and Asia and connects to the Mediterranean through a series of waterways, is known for its dark waters.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 15, 2026
For five decades, presidential administrations, businesses and states have fought over what wetlands and waterways should be protected from pollution by this landmark environmental legislation.
From Salon ● Jul. 15, 2026
In March, Environment Minister Andrew Muir said reforms could see NI Water face tougher punishments for issues in the waterways.
From BBC ● Jul. 14, 2026
For much of the year, the community’s waterways are frozen, making the summer fuel shipments critical.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 7, 2026
At first, they were empty, but with each passing storm, rainwater surged through the waterways, and the ponds gradually filled.
From "The Wild Robot Protects" by Peter Brown
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.
