columna

Columna, columnae, f. First declension, from the same root as culmen, a summit, so the underlying idea is simply something standing upright.

In architecture it is the free-standing round shaft, as against the pila, a squared pier built for load rather than for looks. The Columnae Herculis, the Pillars of Hercules at Gibraltar, marked the edge of the known world, and a columna rostrata was a victory monument studded with the beaks of captured ships. The trap is metaphorical: the newspaper column and the marching column are both later extensions of the shape, and a Roman body of troops on the move is an agmen, never a columna. Gives column, colonnade and Italian colonna.