Word
Kana: なぎさ Romaji: nagisa Level: N1

Meaning in English

water's edge, beach, shore

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Dictionary

Word context

What it means

What does 渚 mean? It denotes the seashore—the land at the edge where sea and land meet, used to describe coastal areas, beaches, or the shoreline in geographic and literary contexts.

Main meanings

  • The shoreline or coast—the land immediately adjacent to the sea.
  • Beaches or coastal scenery described in literature and poetry.
  • A scenic or symbolic reference to the meeting point of land and water in prose.

How to use it

Used as a noun in formal, literary, and geographic contexts; in everyday speech it appears mainly in place names and poetic expressions; typical constructions include 渚に, 渚で, 渚の風景.

Variants and close terms

  • 浜辺 (はまべ, hamabe) — shore or beach
  • 海岸 (かいがん, kaigan) — coast
  • 浜 (はま, hama) — shore or beach (short)
  • 海辺 (うみべ, umibe) — seashore

Composition

  • Left radical 氵 indicates water; the right component conveys a shore or boundary where water meets land, together forming the concept of the seashore.

Etymology

渚 is a native kanji whose form combines the water radical with a semantic element denoting a shore; the kun-reading nagisa developed as the common spoken pronunciation.

Origin

Used since classical Japanese; appears in Heian-era poetry and later prose to describe coastal landscapes.

Word class

Noun (名詞)

Kanji

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