reed

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. Any of various tall perennial grasses, especially of the genera Phragmites or Arundo, having hollow stems, broad leaves, and large plumelike terminal panicles.
2. n. The stalk of any of these plants.
3. n. A collection of these stalks: reed for making baskets.
4. n. Music A primitive wind instrument made of a hollow reed stalk.
5. n. Music A flexible strip of cane or metal set into the mouthpiece or air opening of certain instruments to produce tone by vibrating in response to a stream of air.
6. n. Music An instrument, such as an oboe or clarinet, that is fitted with a reed.
7. n. A narrow movable frame fitted with reed or metal strips that separate the warp threads in weaving.
8. n. Architecture A reeding.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. Any tall broad-leafed grass growing on the margins of streams or in other wet places; especially, any grass of one of the genera Phragmites, Arundo, or Ammophila. The common reed is Phragmites communis, a stately grass from 5 to 12 feet high, found in nearly all parts of the world. It serves by its creeping rootstocks to fix alluvial banks; its stems form perhaps the most durable thatch, and are otherwise useful; and it is planted for ornament. See the generic names, and phrases below. Compare reed-grass.
2. n. Some one of other more or less similar plants. See phrases below.
3. n. A musical pipe of reed or cane, having a mouthpiece made by slitting the tube near a joint, and usually several finger-holes; a rustic or pastoral pipe; hence, figuratively, pastoral poetry. See cut under pipe.
4. n. In music: In musical instruments of the oboe and clarinet classes, and in all kinds of organs, a thin elastic plate or tongue of reed, wood, or metal, so fitted to an opening into a pipe as nearly to close it, and so arranged that, when a current of air is directed through the opening, the reed is drawn into or driven against it so as to close it, but immediately springs back by its own elasticity, only to be pressed forward again by the air, thus producing a tone, either directly by its own vibrations or indirectly by the sympathetic vibrations of the column of air in the pipe. When the reed is of metal, the pitch of the tone depends chiefly on its size; but when of reed or cane, it may be so combined with a tube that the pitch shall depend chiefly on the size of the air-column. A free reed is one that vibrates in the opening without touching its edges; a beating or striking reed is one that extends slightly beyond the opening. In orchestral instruments, the wood wind group includes several reed instruments, which have either double reeds (two wooden reeds which strike against each other, as in the oboe, the bassoon, the English horn, etc.), or a single reed (a wooden reed striking against an opening in a wooden mouthpiece or beak, as in the clarinet, the basset-horn, etc.). A pipe-organ usually contains one or more sets of reed-pipes, the tongues of which are nearly always striking reeds of brass. (See reed-pipe.) A reed-organ is properly a collection of several sets of reeds the tongues of which are free reeds of brass. (See reed-organ.) In the brass wind group of instruments, with but few exceptions, the tone is produced by the player's lips acting as free membranous reeds within the cup of the mouthpiece. The mechanism of the human voice, also, is essentially a reed-instrument, the vocal cords being simply free membranous reeds which may be stretched within the tube of the larynx. The quality of the tone produced by a reed varies indefinitely, according to the material and character of the reed itself, the method in which it is set in vibration, and especially the arrangement of the tube or cavity with which it is connected. The accompanying fig. 1 shows the construction of an organreed: a is the reed-block, which in use is inserted in its proper slot in the reedboard; b, the metal tongue, which is set in sonorous vibration when air is forced through the opening c. Fig. 2 shows the mouthpiece of a clarinet, in which a is the reed, held to the body of the mouthpiece by the splitbands b, which are drawn tight by the screws c. Air entering between the reed and the margin of an opening which it covers causes it to produce a musical tone, the pitch of which is varied partly by the position of the mouthpiece in the mouth and partly by the action of the keys. Fig. 3 shows the mouthpiece of an oboe, and similar reeds are used for bassoons and bagpipes. The reed is made of two counterparts of the same shape bound together by the thread adjective The lower and middle parts of the mouthpiece are circular in cross-section, but the upper part c, the reed proper, is flattened. Air forced through this opening causes the reed to emit a harsh tone, which is softened in quality by the tube of the instrument.
5. n. In reed-instruments of the oboe class, and in both pipe- and reed-organs, the entire mechanism immediately surrounding the reed proper, consisting of the tube or box the opening or eschallot of which the reed itself covers or fills, together with any other attachments, like the tuning-wire of reed-pipes. (See reed-organ and reed-pipe.) In the clarinet the analogous part is called the beak or mouthpiece.
6. n. Any reed-instrument as a whole, tike an oboe or a clarinet: as, the reeds of an orchestra.
7. n. In organ-building, same as reed-stop.
8. n. A missile weapon; an arrow or a javelin: used poetically.
9. n. Reeds or straw prepared for thatching; thatch: a general term: as, a bundle of reed.
10. n. A long slender elastic rod of whalebone, ratan, or steel, of which several are inserted in a woman's skirt to expand or stiffen it.
11. n. In mining, any hollow plant-stem which can be filled with powder and put into the cavity left. by the withdrawal of the needle, to set off the charge at the bottom. Such devices are nearly or entirely superseded by the safety-fuse. Also called spire.
12. n. An instrument used for pressing down the threads of the woof in tapestry, so as to keep the surface well together.
13. n. A weavers' instrument for separating the threads of the warp, and for beating the weft up to the web. It is made of parallel slips of metal or reed, called dents, which resemble the teeth of a comb. The dents are fixed at their ends into two parallel pieces of wood set a few inches apart.
14. n. In heraldry, a bearing representing a weavers' reed. See slay.
15. n. A Hebrew and Assyrian unit, of length, equal to 6 cubits, generally taken as being from 124 to 130 inches.
16. n. Same as rennet-bag.
17. n. In arch., carp., etc., a small convex molding; in the plural, same as reeding, 2.
18. To thatch. Compare reed, n., 6.
19. In carp., arch., etc., to fashion into, or decorate with, reeds or reeding.
20. An obsolete form of red (still extant in the surname Reed).
21. n. An obsolete form of read.
22. To draw (warp-threads) through the reed of a loom.
23. To furnish with reeds, as an organ.

Wiktionary

1. n. botany, countable Any of various types of tall stiff perennial grass-like plants growing together in groups near water.
2. n. countable, botany The hollow stem of these plants.
3. n. countable, music Part of the mouthpiece of certain woodwind instruments, comprising of a thin piece of wood or metal which shakes very quickly to produce sound when a musician blows over it.
4. n. countable, music A musical instrument such as the clarinet or oboe, which produces sound when a musician blows on the reed.
5. n. uncountable reeding
6. v. To mill or mint with reeding.
7. v. Simple past tense and past participle of ree.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. adj. obsolete Red.
2. v. obsolete Same as rede.
3. n. Prov. Eng. or Scot. The fourth stomach of a ruminant; rennet.
4. n. (Bot.) A name given to many tall and coarse grasses or grasslike plants, and their slender, often jointed, stems, such as the various kinds of bamboo, and especially the common reed of Europe and North America (Phragmites communis).
5. n. A musical instrument made of the hollow joint of some plant; a rustic or pastoral pipe.
6. n. An arrow, as made of a reed.
7. n. Prov. Eng. Straw prepared for thatching a roof.
8. n. A small piece of cane or wood attached to the mouthpiece of certain instruments, and set in vibration by the breath. In the clarinet it is a single fiat reed; in the oboe and bassoon it is double, forming a compressed tube.
9. n. One of the thin pieces of metal, the vibration of which produce the tones of a melodeon, accordeon, harmonium, or seraphine; also attached to certain sets or registers of pipes in an organ.
10. n. (Weaving) A frame having parallel flat stripe of metal or reed, between which the warp threads pass, set in the swinging lathe or batten of a loom for beating up the weft; a sley. See Batten.
11. n. (Mining) A tube containing the train of powder for igniting the charge in blasting.
12. n. (Arch.) Same as Reeding.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. United States journalist who reported on the October Revolution from Petrograd in 1917; founded the Communist Labor Party in America in 1919; is buried in the Kremlin in Moscow (1887-1920)
2. n. a vibrator consisting of a thin strip of stiff material that vibrates to produce a tone when air streams over it
3. n. a musical instrument that sounds by means of a vibrating reed
4. n. United States physician who proved that yellow fever is transmitted by mosquitoes (1851-1902)
5. n. tall woody perennial grasses with hollow slender stems especially of the genera Arundo and Phragmites