Talk:Spit (landform)

world longest ?
Seems like someone tried to edit this article to settle a reddit bet on what the longest spit was.

https://www.reddit.com/r/geography/comments/14c89u0/what_are_these_small_wide_strips_of_land_called/

Consulting AIs, I get the followings list and it seems fairly consistent depending on how I sources it, so I believe this to be reasonably true, ...


 * Arabat Spit (Ukraine): 113 kilometers (70 miles)
 * Younghusband Peninsula Spit (Australia): 100 kilometers (62 miles)
 * Chesil Bank (England): 29 kilometers (18 miles)
 * Spit of Barnegat (New Jersey, USA): 27 kilometers (17 miles)
 * Long Beach Peninsula (Washington, USA): 26 kilometers (16 miles)
 * Valdes Peninsula (Argentina): 25 kilometers (15 miles)
 * Kachemak Spit (Alaska, USA): 24 kilometers (15 miles)
 * Long Point (Ontario, Canada): 23 kilometers (14 miles)
 * St. Joseph Peninsula (Florida, USA): 22 kilometers (13 miles)
 * Canaveral Peninsula (Florida, USA): 21 kilometers (13 miles)

Distance measurements on Google Maps seems to concur with these distances.

Merge?
There's three articles of varying quality describing similar (though not identical) landforms, Spit; Tombolo and Bar. Should they maybe be merged into one larger article to draw all the info together? It seems some info about their formation that is relevant to all three forms is on some pages but not all. Coyote-37 16:30, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
 * That seems like a reasonable approach. I think spit and tombolo are types of bar (landform). - Marshman 18:16, 26 July 2005 (UTC)


 * I would favour keeping these three above separate. While spit and tombolo are clearly types of bars, their formation geology differs and each article could be expected to reach significant size.  As far as bar (landform) is concerned, I have made a renaming/merge proposal as follows:
 * merge shoal, sandbank and bar (landform) with the surviving name probably being shoal. (It s nice to get rid of parens in titles unless such a name can't really be avoided.)
 * create two new explicit disambiguation pages called shoal (disambiguation) and sandbank (disambiguation) to handle the multiliplicity of uses.
 * Cuvette 03:22, 22 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree with Cuvette, it is important to remember that a spit, bar and a tombolo are markedly different coastal landforms, and it would be difficult to classify them all under an umbrella term. I think a umbrella page which connects them all would be a good idea, but each should still retain their own individual pages, so as to allow for expansion on each in greater depth.--P.Marlow (talk) 19:58, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

UK part of Spits around the world
I think this part maybe very poor. Spurn Head lies in a north west to south east direction due to long shore drift. The spurn should probably added as the example of the UK's best known and possibly largest spit (that needs checking). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Samlaw (talk • contribs) 16:29, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Etymology?
One question I have that this article didn't address: where did the word come from? I wouldn't be surprised if it has some Germanic origin, but since it's similar enough in concept to expectoration, we ought to explain this. Daniel Case (talk) 16:49, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
 * According to Etymonline, it is the same word as roasting spit actually. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 16:10, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Massachusettes
Hey, is the hook on Mass. a type of spit? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.238.63.123 (talk) 16:57, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Chesil Beach
Chesil beach is not a spit - it was, for a long time, considered a tombolo, but geological investigation suggests it is an offshore barrier. I'm sure the actual page for Chesil in Wiki says this??? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.27.198.3 (talk) 19:33, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Spits around the world
About half of the section "Spits Around the World" appears to be complete nonsense. For instance "Spits in the UK are caused by prevailing southwesterly winds, which give the spits their direction." What about Orford Ness, where the overall longshore drift is from the North (though there are some complexities to this generalisation)? Then we all know that Chesil Beach is not a spit.

I can't speak for the rest of this section - but that has to be highly suspect too, based on the above. Incidentally, I note that there are no in-line references in this section.

Is this some sort of sabotage by a geography teacher who wants to catch the students who didn't attend any of the classes or read any set books? Is there a proper geographer out there who can rewrite all this stuff? (I would take it on, but I'm still reading up on the subject for the last Wikipedia page that "lit the blue touchpaper".)

ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 16:46, 29 April 2015 (UTC)


 * The UK paragraph is obviously bollocks. I would have deleted it without discussion – but now that you've started one, we'd better see if there are any dissenters. Maproom (talk) 17:35, 29 April 2015 (UTC)


 * I'm thinking the whole article needs a good look at - I don't have a very complete knowledge of this subject, so the whole lot could be nonsense as far as I know. And I am reluctant to just delete the rubbish without replacing it with some information that is correct. I am just in the process of flagging this up on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geography to see if there is someone better suited to the task than me. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 22:35, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Difference from tombolo
This article needs to describe the difference between a spit and a tombolo. 2A04:4A43:572F:CB45:0:0:179E:DC9D (talk) 09:12, 8 August 2023 (UTC)