Forms: 6– beach; also 6 bache, bayche, 7 beatch, 7–8 baich(e, 8 beech. [Origin unknown: apparently at first a dialect word, meaning, as it still does in Sussex, Kent, and the adjacent counties, the shingle or pebbles worn by the waves. Thence the transference of the term to the place covered by ‘beach,’ was easy for those who heard such phrases as ‘to lie’ or ‘walk on the beach,’ without knowing the exact significance. The Fr. grève shows precisely the same transference. If OE., the type would be *bǽce. A derivation from ON. bakki ‘bank,’ which has been proposed (for sense 3), is not admissible phonologically: (cf. BACHE). Another conjecture would derive beach from bleach:—OE. blǽce, f. blác white, with loss of l, of which there is however no evidence.]
1. (Usually collect., formerly occas. with pl.): The loose water-worn pebbles of the sea-shore; shingle.
c. 1535. Art Suruey, 28. The smooth hard beach on the Seashoares burnes to a purer white.
1538. Leland, Itin., VII. 143. A Banke of baches throwen up by the Se.
1597. Gerard, Herbal, xxxvi. § 16. 249. Rowling pebble stones, which those that dwell neere the sea do call Bayche.
1598. Hakluyt, Voy., I. 355 (R.). We haled your barke ouer a barre of beach or peeble stones.
1627. Capt. Smith, Seaman’s Gram., xii. 57. As many peeble stones or beatch as can there lie.
1721. Perry, Daggenh. Breach, 116. The Drift or Rolling of the Beach or Shingle along the Shore.
1875. Parish, Sussex Dial. (E. D. S.), s.v. Beach, Shingle brought from the sea-coast is always called beach.
1884. Cole, Antiq. Hastings, 18. All that part between Cambridge Road and the sea is one mass of beach.
† 2. A ridge or bank of stones or shingle. Obs.
1673. Ray, Journ. Low C., 280. The baich or languet of land between the Haven of Messina and the Fretum Siculum. Ibid. (1692), Discourses (1713), 8. Raising up therein a Baich or Bank of Stones as big as Towers.
3. The shore of the sea, on which the waves break, the strand; spec. the part of the shore lying between high- and low-water-mark. Also applied to the shore of a lake or large river. In Geol. an ancient sea-margin.
(In early quotations, this sense is often doubtful: it is probably Shakespeare’s sense in all the five passages in which he uses beach; though, taken by themselves, ‘stand vpon the beach’ Merch V., IV. i. 71, the Fishermen, that walk’d vpon the beach’ Lear, IV. vi. 17, might as well belong to 1.)
1596. Shaks. (see above). Ibid. (1607), Cor., V. iii. 58. The Pibbles on the hungry beach.
1667. Milton, P. L., I. 299. On the Beach Of that inflamed sea, He stood.
1762. Falconer, Shipwr., III. 365. In dreadful form the curving beech appears.
1830. Lyell, Princ. Geol., xiii. (1850), 178. These strata passing by the name of ‘raised beaches,’ occur at moderate elevations on the coast.
1837. Carlyle, Fr. Rev., II. I. ii. 13. Like gold-grains in the mud-beach.
1880. Geikie, Phys. Geog., iii. xvii. 154. The strip of sand, gravel or mud, which is alternately covered and laid bare by the rise and fall of the tidal undulation is called the beach.
4. Comb., chiefly attrib., as beach-bind, -line, -pea, -sand. Also beach-comber, ‘a long wave rolling in from the ocean’ (Bartlett, Dict. Amer.); also a settler on the islands of the Pacific, living by pearl-fishery, etc., and often by less reputable means (whence beach-combing ppl. adj.); beach-grass, a reedy grass (Arundo arenaria) growing on the sea-shore; beachman, one who earns his living on the beach; beach-master, a superior officer appointed to superintend the disembarkation of troops; beach-rest, a chair-back used for sitting against on the beach; beach-wagon, a light open wagon, with two or more seats.
1837. Hawthorne, Amer. Note Bks. (1871), I. 187. You are preceded by a flock of twenty or thirty *beach birds.
1847. Blackw. Mag., LXI. 757. A daring Yankee *beach-comber.
1880. Athenæum, 18 Dec., 809/2. The white scamps who, as *‘Beach-combers,’ have polluted these Edens and debauched their inhabitants.
1880. J. S. Cooper, Coral Lands, I. xx. 242. The *beach-combing pioneers of the Pacific.
1852. T. Harris, Insects New Eng., 50, note. The advantages to be derived from employing … *beach-grass, in fixing the sands of the shore.
1881. Harper’s Mag., LXIII. 494. The *beachmen put their shoulders to the stern and gunwhale.
1875. Bedford, Sailor’s Pocket Bk., vii. 275. The *Beach Master is to take care that … all appliances for disembarking troops … are kept in good order.
1884. Harper’s Mag., June, 103/2. The *beach pea is found along the North Shore.
1881. Miss Yonge, Rev. Nieces, 167. I see the invalid lady creep out with her *beach-rest.
