How to Use reedy in a Sentence

reedy

adjective
  • Their voices sounded high and reedy, like that of preteen boys.
    — Clarence Williams, Washington Post, 27 June 2024
  • The sound was reedy and sparse, like somebody scraping a penny across a hair comb.
    — Bryan Hendricks, Arkansas Online, 10 Sep. 2023
  • And his sing-songy voice, with its reedy tremolo, has a tendency to crack from time to time.
    — Chuck Yarborough, cleveland.com, 31 May 2017
  • Rencher, tall and reedy, was more reserved than his partner, but armed with razor-sharp wit.
    — Kate Armanini, Chicago Tribune, 11 May 2026
  • Trees climb over each other above thick knots of reedy grass, consuming what used to be levees and culverts.
    — Jake Bittle, WIRED, 6 Jan. 2024
  • There was precocious, reedy, teen Kobe desperate to make his mark.
    — Globe Staff, BostonGlobe.com, 27 Jan. 2020
  • Park lakes and reedy little streams—anything not too polluted from the steel factories.
    — Danielle Parker, CBS News, 20 Jan. 2026
  • Out front, there was a child's play kitchen with a sink full of stagnant, reedy water and a white car whose whole front had been sideswiped and deeply dented.
    — Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, GQ, 21 Aug. 2017
  • The reedy, tree-like grass is a panda’s primary food source, especially the shoots.
    — Monica Cull, Discover Magazine, 27 Feb. 2025
  • But his singing had rich, reedy coloring and youthful ardor, and his soaring phrases with big high notes carried well.
    — New York Times, 4 Oct. 2019
  • He is often offered up as an example of an actor who couldn’t make the transition to sound—his voice was said to have been too reedy or something.
    — Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker, 6 Dec. 2021
  • All around the house the lawns are manicured, but high, reedy grasses surround the gray Victorian, and the wood on one side of the porch has started to rot.
    — Aaron Gilbreath, Longreads, 16 May 2017
  • Linney’s got an assertive alto, while Hecht’s timbre is reedier and more winding, a viola and oboe.
    — Vulture, 25 Apr. 2023
  • The prosecutor, Johann Frischman, laid out, in a reedy voice, the criminal complaint.
    — William Finnegan, New Yorker, 29 June 2026
  • Alejandro Arias, an American evangelist with a reedy voice, addressed the crowd.
    — Pete McKenzie, Harpers Magazine, 18 June 2025
  • There, just before getting a molar pulled, Baudier came across a series of photos of reedy men with fishing rods and nets, lolling in boats and along the banks of lagoons.
    — Jonathan Blitzer, The New Yorker, 2 June 2017
  • Though the material is a mixed bag, Alexander's beautifully reedy, restrained voice sounds great throughout.
    — Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader, 8 Aug. 2017
  • Liam sang most of the songs in his reedy yowl, all charisma with his hands pulled behind his back, head tilted up toward the sky and a parka often inexplicably zipped all the way up to his chin.
    — Paula Mejía, Vulture, 5 July 2025
  • Situated in a depression surrounded by desert vistas and seep willows, the shallow, reedy waterhole is a haven for desert creatures.
    — Mare Czinar, The Arizona Republic, 24 Dec. 2021
  • Her achingly vulnerable songs – sung in a plaintive, slightly reedy voice that Knitel channels – tell a story of love and loss that mirrors King’s own.
    — Mike Fischer, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 21 June 2017
  • There’s a Huck Finn-like quality to putting around on a small boat exploring reedy regions of river tucked in urban areas, Nardone says.
    — Anna Bauman, Detroit Free Press, 5 June 2019
  • Firm if slightly sweaty handshake notwithstanding, there’s a gentleness to Root; old-school manners, slender shoulders and a reedy Sheffield twang.
    — James Wallace, New York Times, 22 May 2026
  • Chalamet sulks and talks out of the side of his mouth, picking from a grab bag of accents that vary with each scene—all of which are far more reedy and cartoonish than Dylan actually sounded in his younger days.
    — Madison Bloom, Pitchfork, 10 Dec. 2024
  • He was guided through the motions of the fry station by a reedy, goateed young man, an actual employee, who had been caught up in the candidate’s maudlin cosplay of worker solidarity.
    — E. Tammy Kim, The New Yorker, 1 Nov. 2024
  • Even though detractors said her voice was too reedy, Mangeshkar broke through first in Marathi films and later in Hindi cinema, which was headquartered in what was then called Bombay.
    — Shalini Dore, Variety, 5 Feb. 2022
  • At the Upper West Side outpost of the Strand, the actor is a reedy presence, his small figure buried in a large North Face winter jacket and topped with a shock of curly hair.
    — Jackson McHenry, Vulture, 20 Feb. 2026
  • Salim, a reedy 40-year-old with a wispy goatee, once had a fishing boat and earned enough money catching prawns to build a house of brick and concrete for his family of four in western Myanmar’s Maungdaw district.
    — Shashank Bengali, latimes.com, 19 June 2018
  • In early 2023, one such target was Arundo, or giant reed, a bamboo-like plant that’s native to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers but now grows dense, reedy walls along Arizona streams.
    — Brandon Loomis, The Arizona Republic, 20 May 2024
  • On Saturday the Russian artist sang in the original keys – that is, without evident transpositions – and his bright, reedy tenor sailed sweetly and without strain over Bicket’s chamber orchestra, which was playing at modern pitch.
    — John Von Rhein, chicagotribune.com, 24 Sep. 2017
  • Among those acolytes is Lucien (Jérémy Gillet), a reedy, repressed young virgin who yearns to be part of the gay community but hasn’t the courage to come out to his domineering mother Christine (Elisabeth Wiener), who also just happens to be the country’s very right-wing health minister.
    — Guy Lodge, Variety, 23 May 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'reedy.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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