Shoreline

How to spell shoreline

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce shoreline

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does shoreline mean?

1. nounThe line along which a body of water meets the land.

Shoreline in a sentence

• Erosion has pushed the shoreline several metres inland over the decade.

• The resort built a wooden walkway that follows the shoreline for a mile.

Where does shoreline come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Shoreline is a transparent English compound, joining 'shore' and 'line', that came into common use in the nineteenth century to name the edge where land meets water. The first element, 'shore', appears in Middle English as 'schore' and is related to Middle Low German and Middle Dutch 'schore', words for the strip of land at the water's edge; some scholars connect it to an old root meaning 'to cut', as though the shore were where the land is cut off by the sea. The second element, 'line', travelled into English from the Latin 'linea', meaning a linen thread or a cord, and by extension any long thin mark, since flax thread was once used to mark out straight edges. Put together, the parts describe exactly what the word means: the linear boundary traced by the shore. Because both halves are ordinary words spelled as they sound, the only real spelling decision is remembering it is written as one solid word rather than two.

How the word is built

• shore (land along a body of water)
• line (a long narrow mark or boundary)