Definition of "beach"

Pretty soon I struck into a sort of path […]. It twisted and turned, […] and opened out into a big clear space like a lawn. And, back of the lawn, was a big, old-fashioned house, with piazzas stretching in front of it, and all blazing with lights. 'Twas the house I'd seen the roof of from the beach.

1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, chapter 1, in Mr. Pratt's Patients

Up and down, the beach lay empty for miles.

1988, Robert Ferro, Second Son

I never realised Lincoln was a seaside town. BRIAN LAWS Scunthorpe manager, after losing on a liberally sanded beach of a pitch

2008, Phil Shaw, The Book of Football Quotations, page 415

The series was brought to an ironic conclusion when England became hoist by their own petard, as they lost the deciding final Test on a 'beach' of a wicket. Neither side batted well.

2012, Tim Quelch, Bent Arms & Dodgy Wickets

When we finally beached, the land was scarcely less wet than the sea.

1941, Emily Carr, “Salt Water”, in Klee Wyck

It seems that some honest mariners of Dover, or Sandwich, or some one of the Cinque Ports, had after a hard chase succeeded in killing and beaching a fine whale which they had originally descried afar off from the shore.

1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “Chapter 90”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley

Great Aías led twelve ships from Sálamisand beached them where Athenians formed for battle.

1974, Homer, translated by Robert Fitzgerald, Iliad, Doubleday, Book Two, lines 530-31, p. 53