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   reed

   /riːd/

   noun

   • 1. a tall, slender-leaved plant of the grass family, which grows in water or on marshy ground.
   • ▪ used in names of plants similar to the reed and growing in wet habitats, e.g. bur reed.
   • ▪ a tall straight stalk of a reed plant, used especially as a material in making thatch or household items: "a harvest of thatching reeds"
   • ▪ straw used for thatching. British
   • ▪ a rustic musical pipe made from a reed or from straw: literary "as if thy waves had only heard the shepherd's reed"
   • ▪ an arrow. literary
   • 2. a weak or impressionable person: "the jurors were mere reeds in the wind"
   • 3. a piece of thin cane or metal, sometimes doubled, which vibrates in a current of air to produce the sound of various musical instruments, as in the mouthpiece of a clarinet or oboe or at the base of some organ pipes: "a reed instrument"
   • ▪ a wind instrument played with a reed.
   • ▪ an organ stop with reed pipes.
   • 4. an electrical contact used in a magnetically operated switch or relay: "the permanent magnet closes the reeds and contacts together"
   • 5. a comblike implement (originally made from reed or cane) used by a weaver to separate the threads of the warp and correctly position the weft.
   • 6. a set of semi-cylindrical adjacent mouldings like reeds laid together.

   Word Origin Old Englishhrēod, of West Germanic origin; related to Dutch riet and German Ried.

   Derivatives

   • 1. reedlike adjective

   Scrabble Points: 5

   • R

     1

   • E

     1

   • E

     1

   • D

     2

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