beach breaks - wave is formed over sand and sand bars, can shift seasonally and from storm to storm.
backwash - flood of water returning off the foreshore against incoming waves.
channel - a channel of deeper water where excess water, piled up by waves, flows out to sea.
clean - faces are unrippled - usually offshore or no wind.
cnoid waves - as waves come in to shallow water their shape changes to something called a 'cnoid' which has a short, steep crest and a long shallow trough - those are what we see as lines of corduroy.
fetch - determines the size of a wave. wind speed X time X distance.
frequency - the increase of wave period within a fetch ...a decrease in frequency is an increase in period.
ground swells - waves formed over vast distances, well formed and powerful.
glassy - describes a condition when the wave face becomes silky smooth and the wind drops to form perfect waves.
impact zone - the point where the waves break for the first time.
inside - where waves continue to break, reform, and break again if it's big enough.
lip - curling lip at the top of a wave.
line-up - just beyond the impact zone where you wait to catch waves.
outside - offshore, beyond where the waves break.
pitch - the act of the lip throwing out in front of the wave.
period - time between waves. wind swell less than about 10 seconds /approx/ 12 seconds and longer is ground swell (the energy / power of a wave is proportional not only to its height but its period).
point breaks - wave forms in reaction to the land form consistently.
reef breaks - wave is formed over an underwater reef or rock consistently.
river mouth breaks - wave forms on the sediments deposited at the river mouth, similar to beach breaks but sometimes more susceptible to change & often sharky.
section - any appreciable length of wave that has common characteristics and timing.
e.g. normally the whitewater to beat before finding the face again.
shore-break,shorey - mean dumping wave closing out on the water's edge.
soup / slop - unorganised sloppy foam.
sine waves - in deep water swells are very well-approximated by pure sine waves.
steep - refers to angle or pitch of wave face.
wind swells - waves formed close to the shore by local wind conditions, unorganised, tendency to be slop.
