reef v. to use (excessive) force, especially when hitting, pulling, or twisting (on something). Editorial Note: Jonathon Green’s Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang has a related definition, “to gouge out, to attack, to remove forcibly” and has marked it as Irish, but the citations below demonstrate that this word is used throughout the Anglophone world. Macquarie Dictionary has a definition of reef “(of a horse) to throw its head up, thereby pulling against the reins” but the written record indicates that the rider can also reef on the horse. Thanks to Orion Montoya for suggesting today’s word. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Amid court-ordered busing in the 1970s, a middle-school teacher tried to distract her nervous students on the first day of class with this strange assignment: find a monarch caterpillar. The result? A memorable lesson in the miracle of metamorphosis...
Catina from Abilene, Texas, says her young daughter and her friends fondly refer to each other with the word sigma. The slang terms sigma and sigma male were originally used in the manosphere to denote “an outsider,” and carried a...
does this come from sailing? “reefing in the sail” sounds familiar.
That’s a different kind of “reef,” as far as I can tell, and since it’s in every dictionary I checked, it did not warrant inclusion here.
Our guest horticuluralist at the Arboretum where I work,gave a demo at our volunteer work party on Saturday.
Reef. She used this word to explain how not to use the tool. She explained “avoid reefing the tool”. “Using the tool effectively will be more efficient and save wear and tear on the body.”
I had never heard this expression before. My guest is orgininally from New England. I was exploring the inet for more info on this for the article I am writting on this work party.
Incidently, the weed we worked on removing is
Yellow Archangel;
Lamiastrum galeobdolon (Mint Family) a noxious weed in King County of Washington State.