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You're most likely to encounter littoral in contexts relating to the military and marine sciences. A littoral combat ship is a fast and easily maneuverable combat ship built for use in coastal waters. And in marine ecology, the littoral zone is a coastal zone characterized by abundant dissolved oxygen, sunlight, nutrients, and generally high wave energies and water motion. Littoral can also be found as a noun referring to a coastal region or, more technically, to the shore zone between the high tide and low tide points. The adjective is the older of the two, dating from the mid-17th century; the noun dates from the early 19th century. The word comes to English from Latin litoralis, itself from litor- or litus, meaning "seashore."
Synonyms
Examples of littoral in a Sentence
Pia Singh, CNBC, 18 Aug. 2024
One of those vessels will be the USS Marinette, the 13th Freedom Class littoral combat ship.
—John Coffren, Baltimore Sun, 13 June 2024
Soner Cagaptay, Foreign Affairs, 19 Feb. 2024
The massive polities of the Eurasian littoral had enough surplus worthy of stealing on the part of its rulers.
—Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 24 June 2013
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Cite this Entry
“Littoral.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/littoral. Accessed 30 Nov. 2024.
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littoral
1 of 2 adjective
littoral
2 of 2 nounLegal Definition
littoral
adjective
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