Meaning & use
seawall
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Meaning
nouncountable
A strong wall built along the coast to stop the sea from wearing away land or flooding the area behind it.
Grammar: Countable: you can talk about one seawall or several seawalls.
Patterns
- build a seawall
- a seawall protects something
- along the seawall
The town built a new seawall to protect the houses from winter storms.
We walked along the seawall and watched the waves below.
Without the seawall, the beach would disappear within a few years.
Word forms
| plural | seawalls |
|---|
Common combinations
- build a seawall
- Engineers plan to build a seawall around the harbor.
- concrete seawall
- A concrete seawall now runs the length of the promenade.
- seawall protects
- The seawall protects the low-lying fields from high tides.
- along the seawall
- Cyclists love the path along the seawall.
Synonyms and how they differ
- breakwater
- A breakwater is built in the water to calm waves, while a seawall stands on the shore to stop erosion.
- embankment
- An embankment is a raised bank of earth or stone, often beside a river; a seawall is specifically against the sea.
- dike
- A dike holds back water from low land, usually in the Netherlands or similar places; a seawall is more often a coastal wall.
Word family
- seawall noun
- The base noun itself; no common derived forms exist.
Commonly confused: seawall or sea wall?
seawall vs sea wall
The two-word spelling 'sea wall' is also seen, but 'seawall' is the standard form in engineering and news writing.
Practice
The village decided to ______ a seawall to stop the cliffs from crumbling.
Choose one answer.
'Build a seawall' is the natural collocation for large structures. 'Make' is too general, and 'do a seawall' is not English.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “seawall”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.