Word of the Day: June 15, 2009 - beach

beach (beech) - noun

A beach is the "sand or pebbly shore of a body of water."

First used in the written form around 1535. Beach is a mystery word. When it first turned up, in the dialect of the southeast corner of England, it meant "shingle," and since long stretches of the seashore in Sussex and Kent are pebbly, it is a natural extension that the word for "shingle" should come to be used for the "shore." Its ultimate source is obscure, but some etymologists have suggested a connection with Old English baece or bece, meaning "stream" (a relative of the English word beck), on the grounds that the new meaning could have developed from the notion of "the pebbly bed of a stream."

Photo by mrlins