1660, Henry More,An Explanation of the Grand Mystery of Godliness, page236:
[…] innumerable Legions of his Angels of Light, the warm gleames of whose presence is able to make the Mountains toreek and smoak, and to awake that fiery principle that lies dormient in the Earth into a devouring flame.
[I]f we get caught we're for the gibbet and the chains. Our flesh willreek the wind.
(now rare, of rain or snow) Tofall in such a way (e.g. particularly finely or heavily) as to resemblesmoke.
1837, Robert Mudie,Spring, or the causes, appearances, and effects, of the seasonal renovations of nature in all climats, page266:
... the snow still darkens the air, andreeks along the curling wreaths, as if each were a furnace.
1888, William Wilthew Fenn,A professional secret, and other tales, page44:
the sun, which had been occasionally peeping from amidst the windy, rain-reeking clouds, was getting ominously low. One part, however, of the man's prophecy was not borne out - the weather steadily improved and the wind dropped.
1922,Art and Archaeology, page62:
Great Serpents, like undulating clouds, / Crested, rain-reeking. Their bellies blacken the sky; / Their fierce rains flood earth's hill-rimmed vale; / Their drumming is from mountain to mountain; / From horizon to horizon is their thunder.
The fen "dikes" have been filled-in in some districts; and the black reeks remind one of snow-reeks, except for their blackness.
1874, Edward PEACOCK (F.S.A.),John Markenfield. A Novel, page118:
"There'll be snow-reeks as high as houses if I wait half-an-hour longer." "There'll be no occasion for ye to wade thruff snaw-reeks at all, if ye'll go wi' me. I'll tak ye across th' warpin' till ye get to the sand-lane end,[…]
2013 September 2, Alice Taylor,To School Through the Fields, The O'Brien Press,→ISBN:
Here areek of straw was made, and as thereek of corn reduced in size this rose higher; there was skill in making a well balancedreek. The story of the harvest was told at the front of the thresher.
“Reek”, inPalgrave’s Word List: Durham & Tyneside Dialect Group[1], archived fromthe original on5 September 2024, from F[rancis] M[ilnes] T[emple] Palgrave,A List of Words and Phrases in Everyday Use by the Natives of Hetton-le-Hole in the County of Durham[…] (Publications of the English Dialect Society; 74), London: Published for theEnglish Dialect Society by Henry Frowde,Oxford University Press, 1896,→OCLC.
Frank Graham, editor (1987), “REEK”, inThe New Geordie Dictionary, Rothbury, Northumberland: Butler Publishing,→ISBN.
