coastline

«coastline» in Mova's school dictionary: the edge of the land where it meets the sea, especially… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 2 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (a coastline, coastlines)

meaning for a pupil

A coastline is the edge of the land where it meets the sea, especially its shape as seen on a map or along a long stretch. tree →

sense in the lessons

In geography lessons, coastlines change through erosion (waves wearing away cliffs) and deposition (sand building beaches); features include bays, headlands, cliffs, stacks and spits. Countries are compared by length of coastline. In maths there is a famous puzzle: the more carefully you measure a coastline, the longer it seems (the coastline paradox).

examples

• Norway has a very long, jagged coastline. tree →
• We walked along the rocky coastline. tree →
• Waves are wearing away the coastline. tree →
• The map shows the coastline of Ireland. tree →
• Australia's coastline has beautiful beaches. tree →
• Puffins nest along the Welsh coastline. tree →

note

Countable, one word: coastline. Coast is the strip of land by the sea; coastline is mainly its shape or edge. Shoreline is similar and can be used for lakes too.

In the corpora

• From the late 1200s, sailors in the Mediterranean used portolan charts, sea maps with coastlines and criss-crossing compass lines.
• Canada has the longest coastline of any country, more than 200,000 km, including its many Arctic islands.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «coastline» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.