shelfy

From shelf +‎ -y.

• IPA^(key): /ˈʃɛlfi/

shelfy (comparative more shelfy, superlative most shelfy)

1. (geology) Abounding in shelves; containing crossbedded hard and soft layers that result in rocky shelves at varying angles.
   • 1697, 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:

     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 lost

   • 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:

     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 .

   • 1986, Navajo Nation/National Park Service Team (U.S.), Antelope Point, Final Development Concept Plan, page 15:

     According to Potter and Pattison (1977) , the most common surface landform found along the Antelope Point shoreline is shelfy terrace .

2. (obsolete) Full of strata of rock.
   • 1609, Richard Carew, The Survey of Cornwall. , new edition, London: B. Law, ; Penzance, Cornwall: J. Hewett, published 1769, →OCLC:

     The tillable fields are in some places […] so shelfy that the corn hath much ado to fasten his root.

   • 1758, William Borlase, The Natural History of Cornwall, page 59:

     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.

   • 1801, John Britton, ‎Edward Wedlake Brayley, ‎Joseph Nightingale, The Beauties of England and Wales, page 320:

     The shelfy or slaty soil is found in more abundance in the gentle delivities and level grounds, and may be termed the detritus of the schistus.

3. Shelf-like; resembling or pertaining to a shelf.
   • 1898, The Epic of Humanity, Or, The Quest of the Ideal, page 49:

     His rosebud lay on shelfy breast,And deem it quite a fragrant jest.

   • 2012, Kate Fodor, Rx, page 13:

     I hit my head on that shelfy thing every time I stand up.

   • 2018, P.Z. Reizin, Happiness for Humans:

     A short discussion about options followed; floating, brackets, off-site carcasses, it was all a bit blooming shelfy to be honest .

4. (geodynamics) Relatively horizontal and flat with low friction.
   • 1992, AGU, Fall Meeting:

     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.

   • 2013, W. Richard Peltier, Ice in the Climate System, page 33:

     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 stream and meso-traction stream as were used for shelf and sheet hold; the meso-traction stream does not 'see' the shelfy stream.

   • 2013, Issues in Earth Sciences, Geology, and Geophysics, page 34:

     For extensional-stress resolving 'shelfy stream' models, differences between model results were mainly due to the choice of spatial discretization.

• shelvy

• fleshy