Word.ws English Dictionary

reefed

reefed adjective: having part of a sail tied up in order to adapt the size of the sail to the force of the wind. Also the simple past and past participle of reef.

Adjective

reefed (comparative more reefed, superlative most reefed)

  1. Having part of a sail tied up in order to adapt the size of the sail to the force of the wind.
    • The mainsail was "scandalised" - a nautical mode of describing a sail reefed at both ends[.]1887, Mrs. Dominic D. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 16
  2. (space flight) Semi-deployed, with the canopy initially restricted from fully opening, in order to avoid subjecting the canopy to excessive air loads or the payload to excessive g-forces from fully deploying at high airspeed.

Also used as

reefed is also the simple past and past participle of reef.

Forms of reefed

comparativemore reefed
superlativemost reefed

Words formed from reefed

Questions about reefed

What does reefed mean?
Reefed means having part of a sail tied up in order to adapt the size of the sail to the force of the wind.
What part of speech is reefed?
Reefed is an adjective.

Words near reefed in the dictionary

  1. reefable
  2. reefage
  3. reefal
  4. reefband
  5. reefbands
  6. reefed
  7. reefer
  8. reefer jacket
  9. reefer jackets
  10. reefer unit
  11. reefer's nut

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: reefed (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “reefed.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/reefed. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.