reed
noun
[ riːd ]
• a tall, slender-leaved plant of the grass family, which grows in water or on marshy ground.
• a weak or impressionable person.
• "the jurors were mere reeds in the wind"
• 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"
• an electrical contact used in a magnetically operated switch or relay.
• "the permanent magnet closes the reeds and contacts together"
• a comblike implement (originally made from reed or cane) used by a weaver to separate the threads of the warp and correctly position the weft.
• a set of semi-cylindrical adjacent mouldings like reeds laid together.
Origin:
Old English hrēod, of West Germanic origin; related to Dutch riet and German Ried .
