1. The side or brink of water; the bank or margin of the sea, or of a river, stream or lake.
In dialects or periods in which a water means spec. either ‘a river’ (WATER sb. 12 c), or ‘a lake’ etc. (WATER sb. 12 b), this sense remains in the combination. In early use water-side was often simply equivalent to water’s side: cf. quot. c. 1375, where the rel. pron. refers to watir as a separate word.
a. 1366[?]. Chaucer, Rom. Rose, 129. The medewe … Beet right on the water syde [Fr. la praerie … Tres au pié de l’iaue batoit].
c. 1375. Sc. Leg. Saints, xxix. (Placidas), 410. Til he com til a watir-syd, þat depe was & wele wyd.
c. 1400. Destr. Troy, 13466. Oft went þat wegh to the water syde, The Sea for to serche.
c. 1420. Contn. Brut, 388. Ser Philippe Leiche … was logged betwene þe watir of Sayne and þe abbey,… And þe Baron of Carew was loggid on þe watir syde.
1497. Naval Acc. Hen. VII. (1896), 149. For weying of the same … careyng of hit to the waterside in Hampton viijd.
1535. Coverdale, Ps. i. 3. Soch a man is like a tre planted by the water syde.
1568. Grafton, Chron., II. 127. At this tyme, the water of the Thames sprang so high that it drowned many houses about the water syde.
1607. Dekker & Webster, West-w. Hoe, II. iii. At some Tauerne neare the water-side.
1715. Lond. Gaz., No. 5353/10. A Large Dye-house at the Waterside…, to be Sold.
1796. Mme. D’Arblay, Camilla, IX. i. [They] came down in a superb new equipage to the water-side.
1833. Tennyson, Lady of Shalott, IV. iv. For ere she reach’d upon the tide The first house by the water-side, Singing in her song she died.
1840. Evid. Hull Docks Comm., 256. Whose premises were between the High-street and the water-side.
1855. Hare, Cases Chancery, X. 298. The offices of deputy day oyster meters, had … been the subject of sale and purchase,… on payment of a fine to the oyster meters in chief, or yeomen of the water-side.
1885. L’pool Daily Post, 4 Feb., 4/8. Hundreds … assemble at the dock gates in the hope of obtaining employment at the water-side.
b. pl. (rare.)
1607. Topsell, Four-f. Beasts, 668. When the heat of Summer is about the rising of the Dog-star, we must keepe them [sc. swine] altogether by water sides.
c. attrib.
1663. in Geogr. Jrnl. (1900), XV. 634. Having made fast the blubber to the shore, we have a Waterside-man who stands in a pair of boots, to the middle leg in water, and flaweth such flesh as is not clean cut from the blubber.
1766. W. Stork, Acc. E.-Florida, 56. The variety of swamps, rivulets, and water-side lands.
1831. J. March (title), The Jolly Angler; or Waterside Companion.
1838. Dickens, O. Twist, l. Thronged by the roughest and poorest of waterside-people. Ibid. (1853), Bleak Ho., i. The waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city.
1883. Grant Allen, in Longman’s Mag., July, 303. Waterside flies do not seem to care for yellow, and most waterside flowers are therefore pinkish, purplish, or white.
2. The side towards the water.
1868. Kinglake, Crimea, III. xii. 280, marg. Along its whole front on the water side the place [Sevastopol] was secure without needing troops to defend it.
