littoral

Etymology

From Late Latin littoralis, from litoris (genitive of litus). The doubled 't' is a late medieval addition, and the more classical litoral is also sometimes found. Cognate to French littoral, Spanish litoral, Portuguese litoral, and more distantly to English lido (“outdoor pool”), via Italian lido (“beach, shore”).

adj

1. Of or relating to the shore, especially the seashore.
   The deep-sea fauna has probably been formed almost entirely from the littoral, not in the remotest antiquity, but only after food derived from the débris of the littoral and terrestrial faunas and floras became abundant. 1885, H. N. Moseley, “The Fauna of the Sea-Shore”, in Popular Science Monthly, volume 27

noun

1. A shore.
   […] these Chams belonged to the Malay-Polynesian group and their distribution along the littoral suggests that they were invaders from the sea […] 1921, Sir Charles Eliot, (Please provide the book title or journal name)
   The railway running along the littoral from Brighton westward to Portsmouth forms an important section of the L.B.S.C.R. (Central) secion of the Southern Railway. 1946 January and February, G. A. Sekon, “The L.B.S.C.R. West Coast Section”, in Railway Magazine, page 14
2. The zone of a coast between high tide and low tide levels.
   The night was considerably clearer than anybody on board her desired when the schooner Ventura headed for the land. It rose in places, black and sharp against the velvety indigo, over her dipping bow, though most of the low littoral was wrapped in obscurity. 1907, Harold Bindloss, chapter 6, in The Dust of Conflict
   Buried within the Mediterranean littoral are some seventy to ninety million tons of slag from ancient smelting, about a third of it concentrated in Iberia. This ceaseless industrial fueling caused the deforestation of an estimated fifty to seventy million acres of woodlands. 2006, Edwin Black, chapter 2, in Internal Combustion