littoral

• litoral

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. Cognate to French littoral, Spanish litoral, Portuguese litoral, and more distantly to English lido (“outdoor pool”), via Italian lido (“beach, shore”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈlɪtəɹəl/^[1]

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• Homophone: literal

littoral (not comparable)

1. Of or relating to the shore, especially the seashore.

   Synonyms: intertidal, maritime

   • 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.

• Specifically refers to the water at the shore, rather than the land, particularly in the phrase littoral zone.

• marine
• limnic
• coastal

• supralittoral
• eulittoral
• (can also be considered coordinate terms) sublittoral, neritic

• pelagic
• limnetic
• profundal
• benthic
• (riverbank) riparian

• lido

• Littoral on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

littoral (plural littorals)

1. 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 […]

   • 1946 January and February, G. A. Sekon, “The L.B.S.C.R. West Coast Section”, in Railway Magazine, page 14:

     The railway running along the littoral from Brighton westward to Portsmouth forms an important section of the L.B.S.C.R. (Central) secion of the Southern Railway.

   • 1955 May, H. P. White, “The Togoland Railway”, in Railway Magazine, page 344:

     Just beyond the locomotive depot is the junction of the Anecho line, which curves sharply eastwards. It runs for the whole way along the flat, sandy littoral among coconut plantations, usually a mile or so inland.

2. The zone of a coast between high tide and low tide levels.

   Synonyms: intertidal zone, foreshore, littoral range

   • 1907 January, Harold Bindloss, chapter 6, in The Dust of Conflict, 1st Canadian edition, Toronto, Ont.: McLeod & Allen, →OCLC:

     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^[2]:

     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.

• tortilla

Learned borrowing from Latin littorālis, alternative form of lītorālis, from lītus (“shore”).

• IPA^(key): /li.tɔ.ʁal/

• Audio:

  (file)

littoral (feminine littorale, masculine plural littoraux, feminine plural littorales)

1. littoral, coastal

   Synonym: côtier

littoral m (plural littoraux)

1. littoral

   Synonym: côte

• “littoral”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.
• “littoral” in Dictionnaire français en ligne Larousse.
• “littoral” in Dico en ligne Le Robert.

• tortilla