Range columns partitioning is similar to range partitioning, but enables you to define partitions using ranges based on multiple column values. In addition, you can define the ranges using columns of types other than integer types.

RANGE COLUMNS partitioning differs significantly from RANGE partitioning in the following ways:

RANGE COLUMNS does not accept expressions, only names of columns.

RANGE COLUMNS accepts a list of one or more columns.

RANGE COLUMNS partitions are based on comparisons between tuples (lists of column values) rather than comparisons between scalar values. Placement of rows in RANGE COLUMNS partitions is also based on comparisons between tuples; this is discussed further later in this section.

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/partitioning-columns-range.html