coast
verb · noun
Simple meaning
To glide along without adding energy.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
kohstIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈkoʊst
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
verb
intransitive
To glide along without adding energy; to allow a vehicle to continue moving forward after disengaging the engine or ceasing to apply motive power.
intransitivefigurative
To make a minimal effort; to continue to do something in a routine way, without initiative or effort.
intransitivenautical
To sail along a coast.
noun
The shore of a sea or ocean
The edge of the land where it meets an ocean, sea, gulf, bay, or large lake.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A2 · Elementary
- Frequency
- Very Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: To glide along without adding energy; to allow a vehicle to continue moving forward after disengaging the engine or ceasing to apply motive power.
Used this way, coast is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- No strong connotation
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
A resident of a coastal area.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
Related to the shore of a sea or ocean.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A string of mountain ranges along the Pacific coast of North America from southeastern Alaska to Lower California.
Lofty evergreen of United States coastal foothills from Oregon to Big Sur.
Medium-sized rhododendron of Pacific coast of North America having large rosy brown-spotted flowers.
Slow-growing medium-sized cedar of east coast of the United States.
A string of mountain ranges along the Pacific coast of North America from southeastern Alaska to Lower California.
Highly variable often shrubby evergreen oak of coastal zone of western North America having small thick usually spiny-toothed dark-green leaves.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
The outline of a coast.
A plain adjacent to a coast.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.