From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishreefreef1 /riːf/ noun [countable] SGDNa line of sharp rocks, often made of coral, or a raised area of sand near the surface of the sea a proposal to protect several miles of thousand-year-old coral reef
Examples from the Corpus
reef• the Great Barrier Reef• Where does the synthetic coral reef end and the chanting wave machine begin?• They look as although they belong in a warm and sunny tropical coral reef rather than the dark and cold abyss.• Large shoals may be found on quite shallow reefs or close to the walls of steep drop-offs beyond the protecting reef.• Have you ever seen an ocean wave pass over a submerged reef?• Like most of the true crabs they can be very destructive in the reef tank.• It was near the ocean and Heather could hear the waves crashing on the reef from where she lay in the bed.• For a moment Trent thought of letting the whole damn lot of them go up on the reef.coral reef• If the system started to drift away from the requirements of a coral reef, Gomez would flush the trays.• This is true whether you are in a desert or a forest or swimming on a coral reef.• Marine scientists were pretty sure a coral reef, like any complex ecosystem, must be assembled in the correct order.• Many of them were the tops of volcanoes poking out of the ocean, and most were surrounded by deadly coral reefs.• The cities of Stalinvast were more like coral reefs looming above a sea of hostile jungle.• Daly suggests that before the first interglacial period there were no coral reefs in the modern sense, which is disputable.• To seaward, bright tropical fish dance in the coral reefs.reefreef2 (also reef in) verb [transitive] technical TTWto tie up part of a sail in order to make it smaller→ See Verb tableOrigin reef1 (1500-1600) Dutch rif reef2 (1600-1700) reef “part of a sail tied up” ((14-21 centuries)), from Old Norse rif 