littoral
English
Alternative forms
Etymology
From (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Late Latin littoralis, from litoris (genitive of litus). The doubled 't' is a late medieval addition, and the more classical litoral is also sometimes found. Cognate to French littoral, Spanish litoral, and more distantly to English lido (“outdoor pool”), via Italian lido (“beach, shore”).
Pronunciation
Adjective
littoral (not comparable)
- Of or relating to the shore, especially the seashore.
- Synonym: intertidal
- 1885, H. N. Moseley, “The Fauna of the Sea-Shore”, in Popular Science Monthly[1], volume 27:
- The deep-sea fauna has probably been formed almost entirely from the littoral, not in the remotest antiquity, but only after food derived from the débris of the littoral and terrestrial faunas and floras became abundant.
Usage notes
- Specifically refers to the water at the shore, rather than the land, particularly in the phrase littoral zone.
Coordinate terms
Derived terms
Related terms
Translations
of or relating to the shore, especially the seashore
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Further reading
Noun
littoral (plural littorals)
- A shore.
- 1921, Sir Charles Eliot, (Please provide the book title or journal name):
- […] these Chams belonged to the Malay-Polynesian group and their distribution along the littoral suggests that they were invaders from the sea […]
- The zone of a coast between high tide and low tide levels.
- Synonyms: intertidal zone, foreshore, littoral range
- 1907, Harold Bindloss, chapter 6, in The Dust of Conflict[2]:
- The night was considerably clearer than anybody on board her desired when the schooner Ventura headed for the land. It rose in places, black and sharp against the velvety indigo, over her dipping bow, though most of the low littoral was wrapped in obscurity.
- 2006, Edwin Black, chapter 2, in Internal Combustion[3]:
- Buried within the Mediterranean littoral are some seventy to ninety million tons of slag from ancient smelting, about a third of it concentrated in Iberia. This ceaseless industrial fueling caused the deforestation of an estimated fifty to seventy million acres of woodlands.
Translations
the shore
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the zone of a coast between high tide and low tide levels — see foreshore
References
Anagrams
French
Etymology
Learned borrowing from Latin littorālis, alternative form of lītorālis, from lītus (“shore”).
Pronunciation
Adjective
littoral (feminine littorale, masculine plural littoraux, feminine plural littorales)
Noun
littoral m (plural littoraux)
Further reading
- “littoral”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.
Anagrams
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