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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
Galip Dalay, Time, 19 Aug. 2025
The same day, two US warships – littoral combat ship USS Cincinnati and the destroyer USS Higgins – were spotted about 30 nautical miles away from the shoal, reported Reuters.
—Prabhat Ranjan Mishra, Interesting Engineering, 14 Aug. 2025
Christopher McFadden, Interesting Engineering, 4 Aug. 2025
Hailing from the peninsula’s steppe interior, mountainous east, and Black Sea littoral, this population tended to be devoutly Muslim and, for the most part, had never been fully at ease with the republic’s secularist founding project.
—Soner Cagaptay, Foreign Affairs, 19 Feb. 2024
See All Example Sentences for littoral
Cite this Entry
“Littoral.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/littoral. Accessed 9 Sep. 2025.
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littoral
1 of 2 adjective
littoral
2 of 2 nounLegal Definition
littoral
adjective
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