Dictionary

barrier reef en · NOUN

Meanings

1. A reef separated from the adjacent coast by a channel or lagoon; a reef that forms a barrier between the open ocean and the waters of the shoreline.
   • Ask anyone who's been there and they'll tell you the same thing - there's no surf in Tahiti. The reason they say is because this barrier reef. 1966, Bruce Brown, director, The Endless Summer:
   • This was the first example I had met with of a true barrier reef due to subsidence, as has been so clearly shown by Mr. Darwin. In a sheltered archipelago they will seldom be distinguishable, from the absence of those huge rolling waves and breakers which in the wide ocean throw up a barrier of broken coral far above the usual high-water mark, while here they rarely rise to the surface. 1869, Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, volume II, London: Macmillan and Co., page 99:

Forms

Deriveds

Great Barrier Reef

Translations (13)

sv barriärrev (reef separated from the adjacent coast) · pl rafa barierowa (reef separated from the adjacent coast) · nb barriererev (reef separated from the adjacent coast) · pon nanpahina (reef separated from the adjacent coast) · ga sceir bhacainneach (reef separated from the adjacent coast) · fi valliriutta (reef separated from the adjacent coast) · nn barriererev (reef separated from the adjacent coast) · da barriererev (reef separated from the adjacent coast) · cy barriff (reef separated from the adjacent coast) · cmn 堡礁 (reef separated from the adjacent coast) · ca escull barrera (reef separated from the adjacent coast) · de Barriereriff (reef separated from the adjacent coast) · ko 보초 (reef separated from the adjacent coast)