Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Of or on a shore, especially a seashore: a littoral property; the littoral biogeographic zone.
- n. A coastal region; a shore.
- n. The region or zone between the limits of high and low tides.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Of or pertaining to a shore, as of the sea or a great lake; frequenting or living near the shore: as, littoral trade; littoral fishes or vegetation.
- Situated or bordering on a shore: as, the Littoral Provinces (Litorale or Küstenland), a division of Austria on the east coast of the Adriatic.
- n. A littoral tract or region; the part of a country lying along the coast.
Wiktionary
- adj. of or relating to the shore, especially the seashore.
- n. A shore.
- n. The zone of a coast between high tide and low tide levels.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Of or pertaining to a shore, as of the sea.
- adj. (Biol.) Inhabiting the seashore, esp. the zone between high-water and low-water mark.
WordNet 3.0
- n. the region of the shore of a lake or sea or ocean
- adj. of or relating to a coastal or shore region
Etymologies
- From 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. (Wiktionary)
- Latin lītorālis, from lītus, lītor-, shore. N., from Italian littorale, from Latin lītorālis. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“If you want the coast guard to operate in American littoral waters, you will need an imminent danger right next to your littoral waters.”
A Coast Guard that guards everyone else’s coast « Antiwar.com Blog
“Gates also said the U.S. would deploy to Singapore a newly developed warship known as the littoral combat ship, which is a smaller combat vessel designed to operate close to shorelines rather than in the open ocean.”
USA Today: Gates pledges wider U.S. military presence in Asia
“Perhaps someone may enlighten readers by stripping away all of the legal jargon littoral, etc. and explaining what is happening here.”
The Volokh Conspiracy » Supreme Court Takes Regulatory Takings Case:
“A coastal variant of subtropical rain forest known as littoral rain forest is capable of withstanding high levels of airborne salt.”
“But away from the haunts of man along the littoral is a region of startling beauty -- of rivers and lagoons and hills, their shores and slopes garmented with perennial verdure, the forest-seas bathing the bases of towering peaks.”
“Technically, this is called the littoral area, and it is divisible into zones, each with its characteristic population.”
The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) A Plain Story Simply Told
“What we may term the littoral or shore zone of the sea occupies a belt of prevailingly shallow water, varying in width from a few score to a few hundred miles.”
Outlines of the Earth's History A Popular Study in Physiography
“Its latest disappointment came with a change in Navy procurement strategy that effectively shuts the shipyard out of bidding on future contracts for a small, speedy vessel called the littoral combat ship.”
“The vessels, called littoral combat ships, are designed for tasks associated with modern warfare near land, including hunting submarines, sweeping for mines, and defeating terrorists and pirates in small boats.”
“The Freedom is the first of two warships in a class called littoral combat ships.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘littoral’.
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Jesse's random
bathos, dragoman, tessellated, escutcheon, eikon, mondaine, basilisk, ciborium, rubric, machicolation, jet, defalcation and 198 more...
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NTDW2
yawp, amidships, smug, jounce, fallow, conscionable, polyp, whit, nouveau riche, palatial, encomiastic, exchequer and 182 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Thresholds
we are all just passing through.
(boundaries, portals and liminal spaces/times)cockcrow, interface, thin line, portal, postern, littoral, portico, porch, stoop, strand, liminal, limen and 304 more...
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phrontistery - l
from phrontistery.info
lacis, laches, labret, labile, lability, labarum, labefactation, labeorphily, lux, luff, lour, limn and 496 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
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Not quite love
prolix, pleonastic, senescence, autochthonous, loup, pronk, onomatopoeia, magisterial, rixatrix, esurient, blowsabella, crapulence and 69 more...
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Words I've found in reading.
paronomasia, spatulate, dun, cull, din, anthetic, thaumaturgic, natation, fettle, diurnal, simulacrum, propaedeutic and 14 more...
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Vega's Logophile Dictionary
Words I've heard/read in use, words being learnt, words that I want to eventually use in everyday language, words that are high-brow and elitist and scholarly and obscure, words that display the wo...
parsimonious, torpor, recalcitrant, plebeian, vitriol, gumption, augur, aestival, celerity, diaphanous, farrago, nonpareil and 287 more...
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the sea
littoral, plashing, riffle, scend, seraphs, argosy, Scylla, Amphitrite
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i heart words
autarkic, cline, aver, limn, gossamer, ochre, fulminate, twee, augur, mollify, maw, ecumenical and 113 more...
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Useful
parkour, diegetic, callipygian, dasypygal, hypnagogic, hypnopompic, antejentacular, postprandial, perspicuity, perspicacity, föhn, traceur and 115 more...
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Awesome Words, Part 1: Less Common
These are words that I have learnt over the years and want to remember
epithalamium, hustings, verger, atheling, moue, pendulous, pendragon, funicular, pericope, fettle, eleemosynary, moot and 160 more...
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azd's Words
adamantine, abatial, ablate, ablative, abrogate, accretive, acromegaly, acrostic, actinism, actinic, acuity, adduce and 968 more...
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liminal words
transformational, entryway words: thresh(hold), fresh relief
liminal, sill, threshold, aletheia, inscape, adit, introit, maze, pore, porism, portal, port and 114 more...
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Landscape
riparian, littoral, talus, fen, ambit, savanna, remnant prairie, shortgrass prairie, tallgrass prairie, marsh, swamp, marshy and 199 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for littoral.
heypacksees Before the pelagic & benthic. The shore. From the high water mark to the continental shelf; includes the splash, intertidal, and neritic. Nov 21, 2011
fbharjo by the see shure Jan 9, 2009
chained_bear I was thinking the same thing, rt. Aug 19, 2008
super-logos :-) Aug 19, 2008
qroqqa Not an absolutely blemishless Latin origin though. The Latin word was lītus, lītor- "shore" and developed a variant writing littus for no good reason. The opposite happened with littera "letter", which had a ne'er-do-well variant lītera. In both cases the non-standard Latin words have prevailed, giving rise to English 'littoral' but 'literal', and likewise in other modern languages. Aug 19, 2008
reesetee Logos? Eew. Aug 19, 2008
super-logos That gal had a great pair of littorals. I could lick her littorals...literally...with my lingua.
P.S. This word has a most respectable Latin origin.
Now imagine vacationing at Myrtle Littoral. Or West Palm Littoral...licking all those littorals. Sand on the lingua .....yuck@@##! Aug 18, 2008
milosrdenstvi "A Long Littoral" was one of the assets of a successful country described by President T. Roosevelt. Aug 18, 2008
mollusque "Shallow water fish or literal zone fish: These fishes lives and survive in shallow water near the shore line."
--Jack Mitchell, Central Florida Bass Fishing: The Thrill" Dec 4, 2007