Staithe

//steɪθ// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A riverbank UK, obsolete
  2. 2
    A fixed structure where ships land, especially to load and unload; wharf; landing stage. UK, archaic, dialectal

    "Trevithick's first use of steam traction on rail took place at Merthyr Tydfil, Glamorganshire, on a tramroad 9¾ miles long between the Penydarren ironworks of Samuel Homfray, and the staithes at Abercynon, where the worked iron was loaded into barges on the Glamorganshire Canal."

  3. 3
    An installation built at the railside or nearby for the storage of coal unloaded from wagons. UK

Synonyms

All synonyms
coal dropcoal dropwharfwharf

Example

More examples

"Trevithick's first use of steam traction on rail took place at Merthyr Tydfil, Glamorganshire, on a tramroad 9¾ miles long between the Penydarren ironworks of Samuel Homfray, and the staithes at Abercynon, where the worked iron was loaded into barges on the Glamorganshire Canal."

Etymology

From Old English stæþ and/or Old Norse stöð (“harbor”).

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.