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coastal

UK/ˈkəʊstəl/US/ˈkoʊstəl/
adjectiveC1Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #8,898 of 15,258mostly written

Coastal means beside or belonging to the coast. Coastal towns, coastal erosion, a coastal path.

Coastal erosion is not a fault to be fixed but a process, and holding one stretch in place usually starves the next along of sand — which is why managed retreat is now official policy in places. About forty per cent of the world's people live in coastal areas.

Nick Harris · CC BY 2.5

Definitions of coastal

  1. 1adjectivecoastalBeside or belonging to the coast.C1

    “Coastal towns are at risk of flooding when big storms hit.”

coastal is a quality of place.

Where it comes from

Coast plus -al, from Latin costa, a rib or side. The coast is the side of the land.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *kost-

  2. Latin

    costa — rib; side, wall

  3. Old French

    coste — rib; side of an object; coast

  4. Middle English

    coste — rib; side of the body

  5. English

    coast

  6. English, today

    coastal

From coast + -al. From coast + -al. costal. coast comes from Middle English coste (“rib; side of the body”), from Old French coste (“rib; side of an object; coast”) (modern French côte (“rib; coast; hill, slope”)), from Latin costa (“rib; side, wall”). a doublet of costa. Compare typologically cape < caput, ness (akin to nose), нос (“nose; …; cape, promontory, foreland, gore”), ’рт, рт (“cape, promontory, headland”) < rъtъ (whence рот).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Word Building

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coastal in the wild

  • Other coastal spaces like beaches and seaside resorts generate large revenues through tourism.

    Coast

  • Marine coastal ecosystems can also provide protection against sea level rise and tsunamis.

    Coast

  • Lagoons are commonly divided into coastal lagoons (or barrier lagoons) and atoll lagoons.

    Lagoon

  • Lagoons are common coastal features around many parts of the world.

    Lagoon

  • On non-rocky coasts, coastal erosion results in rock formations in areas where the coastline contains rock layers or fracture zones with varying resistance to erosion.

    Coastal erosion

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the coste family

coast

coastal — used about once every 4,008 pages · #8,898 · point at the bar for the others