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You're most likely to encounter littoral in contexts relating to the military and marine sciences. A littoral combat ship is a fast and easily maneuverable combat ship built for use in coastal waters. And in marine ecology, the littoral zone is a coastal zone characterized by abundant dissolved oxygen, sunlight, nutrients, and generally high wave energies and water motion. Littoral can also be found as a noun referring to a coastal region or, more technically, to the shore zone between the high tide and low tide points. The adjective is the older of the two, dating from the mid-17th century; the noun dates from the early 19th century. The word comes to English from Latin litoralis, itself from litor- or litus, meaning "seashore."
Examples of littoral in a Sentence
Suwanna Gauntlett Upjohn, Forbes.com, 25 June 2025
Vessels in the region include littoral combat ships, fast, agile, and networked surface vessels designed for operations close to shore and mine countermeasure vessels, to neutralize mines using advanced sonar systems.
—Amira El-Fekki
john Feng, MSNBC Newsweek, 18 June 2025
Soner Cagaptay, Foreign Affairs, 19 Feb. 2024
The historical lands of the Swahili are on east Africa’s Indian Ocean littoral.
—John M. Mugane, Quartz, 5 Apr. 2022
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Cite this Entry
“Littoral.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/littoral. Accessed 4 Jul. 2025.
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littoral
1 of 2 adjective
littoral
2 of 2 nounLegal Definition
littoral
adjective
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