coral reef

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coral reef

An erosion-resistant marine ridge or mound consisting chiefly of compacted coral together with algal material and biochemically deposited magnesium and calcium carbonates.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

coral reef

(Physical Geography) a marine ridge or reef consisting of coral and other organic material consolidated into limestone

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

coral reef

A mound or ridge of coral skeletons and calcium carbonate deposits. Coral reefs form in warm, shallow sea waters and provide food and shelter to a wide variety of fish and invertebrates. They also protect shores against erosion by causing large waves to break and lose some of their force before reaching land.

The American Heritage® Student Science Dictionary, Second Edition. Copyright © 2014 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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Noun

coral reef - a reef consisting of coral consolidated into limestone

atoll - an island consisting of a circular coral reef surrounding a lagoon

barrier reef - a long coral reef near and parallel to the shore

cay, Florida key, key - a coral reef off the southern coast of Florida

reef - a submerged ridge of rock or coral near the surface of the water

Translations

coral reef

n → barriera corallina

Collins Italian Dictionary 1st Edition © HarperCollins Publishers 1995

References in classic literature ?

He may even now--if I may use the phrase--be wandering on some plesiosaurus-haunted Oolitic coral reef, or beside the lonely saline lakes of the Triassic Age.

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two volcanic islands emerged of unequal size, surrounded by a coral reef that measured forty miles in circumference.

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The land suddenly at night looms up right over your bows, or perhaps the cry of "Broken water ahead!" is raised, and some long mistake, some complicated edifice of self-delusion, over- confidence, and wrong reasoning is brought down in a fatal shock, and the heart-searing experience of your ship's keel scraping and scrunching over, say, a coral reef. It is a sound, for its size, far more terrific to your soul than that of a world coming violently to an end.

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He has no idea, poor wretch, of the spiritual destitution of a coral reef in the Pacific or what it costs to look up the precious souls among the coco-nuts and bread-fruit.

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In some cases the titles had been altered: "Finis," for instance, being changed to "The Finish," and "The Song of the Outer Reef" to "The Song of the Coral Reef." In one case, an absolutely different title, a misappropriate title, was substituted.

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I have myself published separate volumes on the 'Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs;' on the 'Volcanic Islands visited during the Voyage of the Beagle;' and on the 'Geology of South America.' The sixth volume of the 'Geological Transactions' contains two papers of mine on the Erratic Boulders and Volcanic Phenomena of South America.

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Originally these islets had been mere sand-banks and coral reefs awash in the sea or shallowly covered by the sea.

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It was volcanic in origin, and was now fringed on three sides by coral reefs; some fumaroles to the northward, and a hot spring, were the only vestiges of the forces that had long since originated it.

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There are zigzag lines on it, just like your temperature on a card, and these are probably roads in the island, for the Neverland is always more or less an island, with astonishing splashes of colour here and there, and coral reefs and rakish-looking craft in the offing, and savages and lonely lairs, and gnomes who are mostly tailors, and caves through which a river runs, and princes with six elder brothers, and a hut fast going to decay, and one very small old lady with a hooked nose.

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Moist climate, coral reefs, sharks, Port Blair, convict-barracks, Rutland Island, cottonwoods--Ah, here we are.

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The coloured map appended to my volume on Coral Reefs, led me to conclude that the great oceans are still mainly areas of subsidence, the great archipelagoes still areas of oscillations of level, and the continents areas of elevation.

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I am refreshed and expanded when the freight train rattles past me, and I smell the stores which go dispensing their odors all the way from Long Wharf to Lake Champlain, reminding me of foreign parts, of coral reefs, and Indian oceans, and tropical climes, and the extent of the globe.