landward

land +‎ -ward

landward (not comparable)

1. Located, facing or moving in the direction of the land, as opposed to the sea.
   • 1849, Catherine Gore, chapter 8, in Adventures in Borneo: A Tale of Shipwreck‎, London: Henry Colburn, page 205:

     […] the enclosure in which Bulan resided lay on a landward slope a quarter of a mile from the shore, and so divided from it by lofty trees, that, unless when the inhabitants sought the coast for fishing, they took little heed of what was passing at sea.

   • 1903, Rudyard Kipling, “The Dykes”, in The Five Nations‎, New York: Doubleday, page 25:

     Ninefold deep to the top of the dykes the galloping breakers stride,
     And their overcarried spray is a sea—a sea on the landward side.

   • 1907, Ford Madox Ford, “A Sequence”, in From Inland, and Other Poems‎, London: Alston Rivers, page xxiii:

     So, when the landward breeze winds up from the quickening sea,
     And leaves quiver of a sudden and life is here and the day,
     You shall fade away and pass
     As—when we breathed upon your mirror’s glass—
     Our faces died away.

   • 1950 October, “Completion of Flood-Damage Repairs, East Coast Main Line”, in Railway Magazine, page 709:

     As a temporary measure, the line was at first moved some 8 ft. to the landward side to permit the passage of trains at reduced speed. […] 400 yd. of new retaining wall built on the landward side has allowed the tracks to be realigned here for normal high-speed running.

   • 2012 August 3, Randy Boswell, “‘The clock is ticking’: ‘Megathrust’ West coast earthquake could resemble Japan’s, studies say”, in National Post:

     […] further research will be required to assess “just how much of a difference for potential ground shaking in Victoria, Vancouver, Seattle, etc., may result from an approximately 50-km landward shift” of the expected impact zone.

2. (Scotland) Of the country as opposed to the city, rural; agricultural.
   • 1755 October, The Scots Magazine, volume 17, page 512:

     […] they recommend to all ministers within the bounds, magistrates of towns, and heritors of landward parishes, to exert themselves, and use every prudent and reasonable method in getting their respective congregations to be taught properly, as occasion shall offer.

   • 1790, John Naismith, Thoughts on Various Objects of Industry Pursued in Scotland, Edinburgh: self-published, Book III, Chapter 2, pp. 331-332,

     Hence we may see the weakness and absurdity of that kind of jealousy and aversion which seems to subsist between the landward and manufacturing classes of people.

   • 1893, Robert Louis Stevenson, Catriona‎, Chapter:

     “I do not mean to offend,” said I. “I have no skill of city manners; I never before this day set foot inside the doors of Edinburgh. Take me for a country lad—it’s what I am; and I would rather I told you than you found it out.” ¶ “Indeed, it will be a very unusual thing for strangers to be speaking to each other on the causeway,” she replied. “But if you are landward bred it will be different. I am as landward as yourself; I am Highland, as you see, and think myself the farther from my home.”

• (in the direction of the land): shoreward

• (antonym(s) of “in the direction of the land”): lakeward, seaward
• (antonym(s) of “of the country”): burghal

landward (not comparable)

1. Toward the land.
   • 1718, Nicholas Rowe, Lucan’s Pharsalia Translated into English Verse‎, 2nd edition, London: J. Tonson, published 1722, Volume I, Book III, lines 73-74, p. 122:

     The seamen furl the canvas, strike the mast,
     Then dip their nimble oars, and landward haste.

   • 1847 November 1, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “V”, in Evangeline, a Tale of Acadie, Boston, Mass.: William D. Ticknor & Company, →OCLC, part I, lines 661-662:

     ’Twas the returning tide, that afar from the waste of the ocean,
     With the first dawn of the day, came heaving and hurrying landward.

   • 1984, Alice Jane Lippson, Robert L. Lippson, chapter 3, in Life in the Chesapeake Bay, 2nd edition, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, published 1997, page 50:

     The intertidal mud or sand flat habitat is continuous with many other habitats. Landward, it may be bordered by a beach, marsh, bulkhead, or stretch of riprap.

   • 2014, “Is Australia responsible for asylum seekers detained on Manus Island?” ABC News, 27 February, 2014,

     “The position of successive Australian Governments has been that the Refugees Convention only applies to persons within Australia’s territorial boundaries (that is, landward of the outer limits of the territorial sea),” the report said.

• landwards

landward (uncountable)

1. The side facing land.
   • 1582, chapter 2, in Nicholas Lichefield, transl., The First Booke of the Historie of the Discoverie and Conquest of the East Indias […] set foorth in the Portingale language by Hernan Lopes de Castaneda‎, London: Thomas East:

     The Generall then being at supper, and hearing that call, and looking out to landward, sawe those savage people comming after [Fernan Veloso], and presently imagined they meant him harme, and therefore forthwith he commaunded the whole to put themselves in battaile araye, and he himselfe with certaine others, went to landward without anye weapons, deeming verely that those blacke men meant him no harme, nor would offer annye force […]

   • 1687, Richard Blome, “A Description of New-York”, in The Present State of His Majesties Isles and Territories in America‎, London: D. Newman, page 203:

     The Town is large, containing about five hundred well-built Houses, built with Dutch-Brick, and the meanest not valued under one hundred Pounds; to the landward it is encompassed with a Wall of a good thickness, and fortified at the entrance of the River, so as to command any Ship which passeth that way, by a Fort, called James-Fort […]

   • 1875, Thomas Carlyle, chapter 10, in The Early Kings of Norway‎, London: Chapman & Hall, page 139:

     He sailed along, still northward, day after day; several important people joined him; but the news from landward grew daily more ominous […]

   • 1896, Robert Louis Stevenson, In the South Seas‎, Part 1, Chapter 1:

     Rude and bare hills embraced the inlet upon either hand; it was enclosed to the landward by a bulk of shattered mountains.