Foreshore, Freeboard, Fringing Reef, Frontage: Word Origins, Descriptions of Coastal Features, Processes

In the current alphabetic series of word origins and physical descriptions of coastal features and processes, here are foreshore, freeboard, fringing reef, frontage, and fully developed sea.

Foreshore
Foreshore is a combination of the prefix fore- ("situated in the front") and the noun shore.

The foreshore of a beach is the area "situated in the front" of the beach, that is, the area that meets the water and is exposed to the action of waves. A more technical definition would be something like this: the part of a seashore lying between the low-water mark, which is usually identified by the seaward margin of a low-tide terrace, and the upper limit of wave wash at high tide, usually identified by the crest of a slope carved by wave erosion.

Freeboard
On a coastal structure, such as a seawall, the freeboard is the height that is above the recorded high-water mark and that is designed as an allowance against overflow by waves or other temporary water disturbances.

Another sense of freeboard is the distance in height between the water level and the top of the structure at any given time.

Fringing Reef
The general meaning of the noun fringe is an ornamental border. The word comes from Middle English frenge, from Middle French frenge, from (assumed) Vulgar Latin frimbia, from the Latin plural word fimbriae.

The adjective fringing, meaning forming a fringe, is widely used in geology, as in fringing islands, islands that border a land area, and fringing forest, a forest growing along a watercourse in an area otherwise devoid of trees.

A fringing reef, in general, is a coral reef (a ridge formed in shallow ocean waters from the external skeletons of corals) that borders land. Most commonly, however, the term fringing reef applies specifically to a flat coral reef that surrounds a nonreef island.

Frontage
Frontage, in general, is a piece of land that fronts, or lies adjacent to, some other natural feature or human-made structure. In coastal terminology, frontage is property immediately landward of a beach.

Fully Developed Sea
Waves having the greatest height possible for a given set of conditions, such as the speed and duration of the wind and the length of the unobstructed wind-generating water surface, are said to be a fully developed sea.
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Encyclopaedia Britannica Ready Reference 2004. CD-ROM. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2004.

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. 11th ed. Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 2006.

Merriam-Webster's Geographical Dictionary. 3rd ed. Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 2007.

The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1989.