Library / English Dictionary

BEACH

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

An area of sand sloping down to the water of a sea or lake

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural objects (not man-made)

Hypernyms ("beach" is a kind of...):

formation; geological formation ((geology) the geological features of the earth)

Meronyms (substance of "beach"):

sand (a loose material consisting of grains of rock or coral)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "beach"):

plage (the beach at a seaside resort)

Holonyms ("beach" is a part of...):

shore (the land along the edge of a body of water)

Derivation:

beach (land on a beach)

 II. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Land on a beach

Example:

the ship beached near the port

Classified under:

Verbs of walking, flying, swimming

Hypernyms (to "beach" is one way to...):

land; set down (reach or come to rest)

Sentence frames:

Something ----s
Somebody ----s

Sentence example:

The men beach the boat

Derivation:

beach (an area of sand sloping down to the water of a sea or lake)

Credits

 Context examples: 

A gentle slope ran up from the beach to the entrance of the cave.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Not more than six or eight will probably come, so I shall hire a beach wagon and borrow Mr. Laurence's cherry-bounce. (Hannah's pronunciation of char-a-banc.)

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Did you not spy a crooked man upon the beach?

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Heating in the upper atmosphere 500 miles (800 kilometers) above the Great Red Spot is thought to be caused by a combination of these two wave types “crashing,” like ocean waves on a beach.

(Jupiter’s Great Red Spot Likely a Massive Heat Source, NASA)

Banning plastic bags and straws in coastal areas and putting in place stronger recycling programmes and beach clean-ups can help solve the problem.

(Plastic debris linked to coral disease, death, SciDev.Net)

Then bending to their work once more, they flew across the intervening water, beached their boats upon the sloping sand, and rushed up to us, prostrating themselves with loud cries of greeting before the young chief.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

There was something horrible in the ferocious energy of Berks’s hitting, every blow fetching a grunt from him as he smashed it in, and after each I gazed at Jim, as I have gazed at a stranded vessel upon the Sussex beach when wave after wave has roared over it, fearing each time that I should find it miserably mangled.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The two famous Germans stood beside the stone parapet of the garden walk, with the long, low, heavily gabled house behind them, and they looked down upon the broad sweep of the beach at the foot of the great chalk cliff in which Von Bork, like some wandering eagle, had perched himself four years before.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

At least 70 homes and a school were destroyed in the small coastal town of Tathra in New South Wales, authorities said, where people fled to the beach to avoid the flames and flying embers carried the fire front forward quickly.

(Australian Wildfires Destroy Homes, Kill Cattle as Hundreds of People Flee, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

A woman deposed that she lived near the beach and was standing at the door of her cottage, waiting for the return of the fishermen, about an hour before she heard of the discovery of the body, when she saw a boat with only one man in it push off from that part of the shore where the corpse was afterwards found.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)