reed

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
reed/riːd/

▶noun

• 1 a tall, slender-leaved plant of the grass family, growing in water or on marshy ground. [Genera Phragmites and Arundo: several species.]

  ■ used in names of similar plants growing in wet habitats, e.g. bur-reed.

• 2 a tall, thin, straight stalk of a reed, used especially for thatching.

  ■ Brit. straw for thatching.

  ■ literary a rustic musical pipe made from reeds or straw.

• 3 a piece of thin cane or metal which vibrates in a current of air to produce the sound of various musical instruments, as in the mouthpiece of a clarinet or at the base of some organ pipes.

  ■ a wind instrument played with a reed.

• 4 (also broken reed) a weak or impressionable person.

• 5 literary an arrow.

• 6 a weaver's comb-like implement for separating the warp and positioning the weft.

• 7 (reeds) a set of semi-cylindrical adjacent mouldings like reeds laid together.

• 8 an electrical contact in a magnetically operated switch or relay.

– derivatives
reeded adjective.

– origin OE hrēod, of W. Gmc origin.