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
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.
The strait, a key waterway used to transport helium needed to make artificial-intelligence chips, had remained largely closed in recent weeks.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 17, 2026
But Iranian officials and state media said that conditions remained on passage through the waterway, including the imposition of tolls and coordination with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 17, 2026
On Friday morning, Iran declared that the strait was finally reopened for all commercial, nonmilitary ships hoping to traverse the essential waterway, provided that all entrants follow a “coordinated route” determined by Iranian authorities.
From Slate • Apr. 17, 2026
One-fifth of the world’s oil flowed through the strategically-located waterway prior to the war.
From Barron's • Apr. 16, 2026
Pleads and persists that there must be some waterway to the Gulf of California.
From "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer
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.
