Coast, coastline and beach

Every week, I get an e-mail alert from Photo Friday, a weekly photo event with varying themes. I don’t always join but when I find the theme interesting, I do. The current theme is “coastline” and I have tons of photos of coastlines in my hard drive taken in various places mostly from the plane window. I chose the one I liked best and I was about to submit it when I decided to browse through the submitted entries in the Photo Friday site. And I was surprised that some photos were of shores and beaches. Just to be sure, I checked my dictionary and it was just as I thought. Coastline is not the same as coast, coast is synonymous with shore but not all coasts and shores are beaches.

Now, I’m not trying to split hairs. And I’m not trying to get some entries disqualified. I’m just saying. You know, I’m just going by the dictionary meaning of the words. A coastline is “the outline of a coast, esp. with regard to its shape and appearance”; a coast is “the part of the land near the sea; the edge of the land”; a beach is “a pebbly or sandy shore, esp. by the ocean between high- and low-water marks.”

So that’s a coastline above, a coast below…

… and a beach in the above photo.

The first photo was taken from the plane window somewhere between Legazpi City, Albay, and Manila. The second photo shows the coast of Georgetown in Penang, Malaysia, and was taken aboard a cruise ship. The last photo of White Beach in Boracay was taken by Speedy.