Learn English – What’s the difference between “line” and “row”

ambiguitydifferencesmeaningword-choice

I’m not exactly sure under which circumstances is line or row the more suitable term.

In Portuguese, they both translate to the same word linha, which can be used for both a drawing line or for an item in a table.

Best Answer

There is substantial overlap in meaning, and if you use one where the other would've been more appropriate, native speakers will still understand what you meant; so don't worry about it too much.

For your purposes, I think the most important distinction is that row can only be used to refer to an arrangement of discrete items. For instance, in the sentence "He drew a line between the two points on the map", line cannot be replaced by row.

I can't presently think of an example where I'd say you can't go the other way -- replacing row with line -- but there certainly are cases where it would be odd. For instance, we normally always speak of a table of numbers having rows (which are always horizontal) and columns (which are always vertical). If you referred to a line of a table, that would be peculiar, but not wrong, and I think would be understood as unambiguously horizontal (by analogy with lines of text on a page, which are always horizontal ... well, as long as you're not talking about one of the East Asian languages that can be written vertically, anyway).

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