reefage

English

Etymology

reef +‎ -age

Noun

reefage (uncountable)

1. A reef-like quality; danger or difficulty that is hidden or submerged.
   • 1890, The Theosophist - Volume 11, page 353:

     Gracefully as it has steered past the rocks on which the older negationism split, it has failed to weather a fringe of sunken reefage beyond.

   • 1919, David Smith Cairns, The Army and Religion:

     From a chaplain with a Highland regiment : “The men are inclined to think that the Churches have been kindly but too much addicted to form and ritual, ornamental “fiddle-faddle, with too little concentration on bold and insistent facing of social questions, moral reefage and wreckage, brotherhood and brotherliness. Humanity, optimism, knowledge of social conditions, capacity and insight, rather than formality and class separateness, are what they will demand from the Church on the day of the returning."

   • 1936, The University Review - Volumes 3-4, page 120:

     I was tossed in the delirium of the Great Change upon the reefage of this plane where, derelict to self-realization, I have found nothing of me to be dead except my belief in death.

   • 1990, A. M. Klein, Zailig Pollock, Complete Poems - Volume 1, →ISBN, page 575:

     Near waterfront, a stone's throw from the slums It lifts, above its wreckage, three gold buoys Yet to its reefage tattoo'd flotsam comes Dropping their snared bags of exotic toys.