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PlainSpell

coast

/koʊst/noun, verb

coast is spelled C-O-A-S-T. The wrong spelling people search most is caost: about 20 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 323 of all searches for the word. Coast is a noun meaning “The edge of the land where it meets an ocean, sea, gulf, bay, or large lake”. The plural of coast is coasts.

How many letters and syllables are in coast?

Letters5: C-O-A-S-T
Syllables1 (from its American pronunciation)
In writing74 times per million words; the 1,427th most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searched1; the most searched, caost, about 20 Bing searches a month (all of them)
Rhymes with
Same letters

Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.

How do you spell coast?

Coast is spelled C-O-A-S-T. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 323 of the searches for coast in either form.

coastthe right spelling6,440 searches a month
caosto and a swapped20 searches a month

Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.

How common is coast?

Coast appears 74 times per million words in written English, the 1,427th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How do you pronounce coast?

  • UK /kəʊst/
  • US /koʊst/
  • Australia /kəʉst/

Coast has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-coast.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

What rhymes with coast?

10 words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as coast from its last stressed vowel (/oʊst/):

Spelled with the same letters in another order: costa, ascot.

Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).

Forms of coast

  • coasts plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • coasting participle, present
  • coasted participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What does coast mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

noun

  1. 1

    The edge of the land where it meets an ocean, sea, gulf, bay, or large lake.

    The rocky coast of Maine has few beaches.

  2. 2

    obsoleteThe side or edge of something.

    And the Coaſt towards which the lines KL and VX are drawn, may be call’d the Coaſt of unuſual Refraction.

  3. 3

    obsoleteA region of land; a district or country.

  4. 4

    obsoleteA region of the air or heavens.

verb

  1. 1

    To glide along without adding energy; to allow a vehicle to continue moving forward after disengaging the engine or ceasing to apply motive power.

    When I ran out of gas, fortunately I managed to coast into a nearby gas station.

  2. 2

    To sail along a coast.

  3. 3

    To make a minimal effort; to continue to do something in a routine way, without initiative or effort.

  4. 4

    obsoleteTo draw near to; to approach; to keep near, or by the side of.

  5. 5

    obsoleteTo sail by or near; to follow the coastline of.

  6. 6

    obsoleteTo conduct along a coast or river bank.

  7. 7

    CanadaUSTo slide downhill; to slide on a sled upon snow or ice.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Coast in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchcôte (edge of land meeting ocean, sea, gulf, bay), aller en roue libre (to glide along with no added energy), caboter (to sail along a coast)
GermanKüste (edge of land meeting ocean, sea, gulf, bay), gleiten, ohne zu treten (to glide along with no added energy), segeln (to sail along a coast)
Portuguesecosta, beira (edge of land meeting ocean, sea, gulf, bay), costear (to sail along a coast)
Spanishcosta, litoral (edge of land meeting ocean, sea, gulf, bay), andar sin acelerar, andar sin pedalear (velocipede) (to glide along with no added energy), costear, perlongar (to sail along a coast)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does coast come from?

From Middle English coste (“rib; side of the body”), from Old French coste (“rib; side of an object; coast”) (modern French côte (“rib; coast; hill, slope”)), from Latin costa (“rib; side, wall”). Doublet of costa. Compare typologically cape < Latin caput, ness (akin to nose), Bulgarian нос (nos, “nose; …; cape, promontory, foreland, gore”), Macedonian ’рт (’rt), Serbo-Croatian рт (“cape, promontory, headland”) < Proto-Slavic *rъtъ (whence Russian рот (rot)).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What to look up after coast