Coast

Coast

A coastline or seashore is the area where land meets the sea or ocean. A precise line that can be called a coastline cannot be determined due to the dynamic nature of tides. The term "coastal zone" can be used instead, which is a spatial zone where interaction of the sea and land processes occurs. Both the terms coast and coastal are often used to describe a geographic location or region; for example, New Zealand's West Coast, or the East and West Coasts of the United States.

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Famous quotes containing the word coast:

    Forced from home, and all its pleasures,
    Afric’s coast I left forlorn;
    To increase a stranger’s treasures,
    O’er the raging billows borne.
    Men from England bought and sold me,
    Paid my price in paltry gold;
    But, though theirs they have enroll’d me,
    Minds are never to be sold.
    William Cowper (1731–1800)

    And ladies with their nails prepared for tea
    And sunken barques that coast the shores of hell
    And old men vacant of propriety
    Have faintly rung a next-door neighbor’s bell.
    Allen Tate (1899–1979)

    Frequently also some fair-weather finery ripped off a vessel by a storm near the coast was nailed up against an outhouse. I saw fastened to a shed near the lighthouse a long new sign with the words “ANGLO SAXON” on it in large gilt letters, as if it were a useless part which the ship could afford to lose, or which the sailors had discharged at the same time with the pilot. But it interested somewhat as if it had been a part of the Argo, clipped off in passing through the Symplegades.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)