shelfy

Adjective

shelfy (comparative more shelfy, superlative most shelfy)

1. Abounding in shelves; containing crossbedded hard and soft layers that result in rocky shelves at varying angles.
   • And, o'er the dang'rous deep, secure the navy flies; / Glides by the Sirens' cliffs, a shelfy coast, / Long infamous for ships and sailors lost1697, Virgil, “The Fifth Book of the Æneis”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC
   • The procedure and the results of calculating the wave regime in the example of the shelfy water of the Black Sea are discussed. Analogous data with respect to the wave regime can be obtained for all shelfy bodies of water of the inland and shelf seas of the USSR .1974, G. V. Rzheplinskiy, “Calculation of the Wave Regime of Shelfy Bodies of Water in the Example of the Black Sea”, in Meteorology and Hydrology - Issues 1-6, page 87
2. (obsolete) Full of strata of rock.
   • The tillable fields are in some places […] so shelfy that the corn hath much ado to fasten his root.1609, Richard Carew, The Survey of Cornwall, London: […] S[imon] S[tafford] for Iohn Iaggard, […], →OCLC
   • The vegetable Soils may be distinguished into three sorts, the black and gritty, the shelfy slatty Soil, and the stiff reddish Soil, approaching more to the nature of Clay.1758, William Borlase, The Natural History of Cornwall, page 59
3. Shelf-like; resembling or pertaining to a shelf.
   • His rosebud lay on shelfy breast,And deem it quite a fragrant jest.1898, The Epic of Humanity, Or, The Quest of the Ideal, page 49
   • I hit my head on that shelfy thing every time I stand up.2012, Kate Fodor, Rx, page 13
4. Relatively horizontal and flat with low friction.
   • Reduced models have long been used to describe the mechanics of ice sheets and ice shelves, while more recently a shelf-like model has been used to describe the mechanics of shelfy streams, where the basal friction is ' small ' in a precisely definable sense.1992, AGU, Fall Meeting
   • For many purposes this means we do not have to consider shelfy streams as part of the marine ice sheet system. Moreover, since the slopes of shelfy streams are controlled by the same processes which control shelves, the same arguments about the transfer of kinematical information between shelfy...2013, W. Richard Peltier, Ice in the Climate System, page 33