beach pea
- noun
- /biːtʃ piː/
- UK
:
guisante de playa
- The beach pea grows along the dunes, where it helps prevent erosion.
Examples
-
She admired the vibrant purple flowers of the beach pea as they bloomed in the sunlight.
-
He'd brought her a small basket of beach peas he'd picked from the shore.
Fiction book (1997) -
Farmers often plant beach peas in sandy areas to stabilize the soil.
Synonyms
A wild pea plant that grows on sandy seashores and holds sand with strong roots
A wild pea plant that grows on sandy seashores, with purple flowers and strong roots that hold sand
A wild pea plant with purple flowers that grows on sandy seashores and helps keep sand in place
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound 'beach pea' is directly compositional: it denotes a pea (leguminous plant) associated with the beach, so a learner who knows 'beach' and 'pea' can infer it is a pea that grows on the shore. This noun+noun formation is a regular, cross-linguistically common compounding pattern, making the meaning immediately derivable for a B1 learner.
Etymology
Beach pea is named because it is a pea plant that grows on the beach. Its strong roots and pea-like pods help hold sand on the shore, so the name tells us it is a seaside plant that helps keep sand in place.
