Three consonants carry one idea: standing upright. From a body that stands grows everything that holds a position: the pillar that stands for a building, the page of a book (a column of text), the social class or status one occupies, the candidate who puts himself forward, and the standpoint one takes in an argument. Even the central Jewish prayer, the Amidah, is named for being said standing. Pour the root into the causative and you make something stand, you erect it. Every word here is verified against pealim, niqqud included.
The same root runs through the verb system. Each binyan is a voice: it bends the one idea into active, passive, causative or reciprocal. Tap to hear.
The plain pa'al stands; the hif'il causes to stand (place, erect); the pi'el specializes into typesetting, "to set the columns of a page", which is why עַמּוּד also means a page. The passive pu'al and huf'al and the reflexive hitpa'el are not lexicalized as everyday verbs for this root.
Same root letters, different noun moulds (mishkalim). The mould tells you the function: who does it, the act of doing it, or the thing produced.
Strip the prefixes, suffixes and vowels. Three consonants remain, and the meaning lives there.