Definition of "half-column" [half-column]

• An engaged column of which only half, or about half, projects horizontally from the surface of a wall. (noun)

The Century Dictionary (Public Domain)

• "In the center, from an elaborate base rose a marbled half-column supporting, at eye level, a large, plump cushion of red velvet, on which someone had placed … a peach."
• "The story has, I believe, been told more than once in the newspapers, but, like all such narratives, its effect is much less striking when set forth en bloc in a single half-column of print than when the facts slowly evolve before your own eyes, and the mystery clears gradually away as each new discovery furnishes a step which leads on to the complete truth."
• "About Printing-house Square, mayhap you may light on an honest man, a squeamish man, a proper moral man, a man that shall talk you Latin by the half-column if you will but hear him."