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 island sits at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz and gives Tehran control over ships’ movement through the crucial waterway.
From The Wall Street Journal • Jun. 3, 2026
He then steered his ship towards the critical waterway along with four other vessels.
From BBC • Jun. 2, 2026
Iran last month created the Persian Gulf Strait Authority as it tries to assert dominance over the waterway.
From MarketWatch • Jun. 1, 2026
A Greek supertanker laden with two million barrels of crude communicated with the U.S. while it crossed the waterway off the Omani coast earlier this week.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 30, 2026
His drumming fingers stilled, and his gaze wandered to the waterway running along the teahouse promenade.
From "The City Beautiful" by Aden Polydoros
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.
