cove

The word 'cove' has a journey from an interior space to a coastal feature. Its Old English ancestor, cofa, referred to an inner chamber, cave, or hollow place. This sense of a recessed, enclosed space was later applied by sailors and coastal dwellers to describe a small, recessed, and sheltered indentation along a shoreline. The semantic shift from a generic hollow or den to a specific geographical feature illustrates how language adapts concrete, general terms to describe precise natural formations, with the core concept of a protected, concave space remaining constant.

This word is a simplex form. It originates from Old English cofa, meaning "chamber, den, cave," from Proto-Germanic kubô.