Waterfront

How to spell waterfront

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce waterfront

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does waterfront mean?

1. nounThe part of a town or city that borders a river, lake, harbour or sea, often containing docks and businesses.

Waterfront in a sentence

• The developers want to build luxury flats along the waterfront.

• We walked the entire waterfront before stopping for lunch by the harbour.

Where does waterfront come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent English compound, built from the native Old English words 'wæter', meaning the liquid that fills seas and rivers, and 'front'. The 'front' element, although ultimately from Latin 'frons' meaning 'forehead' or 'the foremost part', had long been thoroughly absorbed into English by the time the two were joined. The compound 'waterfront' itself emerged in the early nineteenth century, first recorded in American English to describe the part of a town or city that lies directly along the edge of a body of water. From the start it carried a commercial flavour, naming the docks, wharves and warehouses where ships loaded and unloaded their cargo. Because both parts are common everyday words, the only real spelling question is whether to write it as one word, two words, or with a hyphen; the single solid form 'waterfront' is now the established standard.

How the word is built

• water (the liquid/sea)
• front (the part facing forward)