barrier reef

1. 1.

   a long coral reef near and parallel to the shore

   Broadercoral reef

Questions about barrier reef

What does barrier reef mean?

barrier reef means "a long coral reef near and parallel to the shore".

Is barrier reef a common word?

barrier reef is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.