beach: [16] Beach is a mystery word. When it first turns up, in the dialect of the southeast corner of England, it means ‘shingle’; and since long stretches of the seashore in Sussex and Kent are pebbly, it is a natural extension that the word for ‘shingle’ should come to be used for ‘shore’. Its ultimate source is obscure, but some etymologists have suggested a connection with Old English bæce or bece ‘stream’ (a relative of English beck [14]), on the grounds that the new meaning could have developed from the notion of the ‘pebbly bed of a stream’. => beck[beach etymology, beach origin, 英语词源]