sluice
Definition from Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Contents |
[edit] English
[edit] Etymology
Old French escluse, French écluse, Late Latin exclusa, sclusa, from Latin excludere, exclusum, to shut out: confer Dutch sluis sluice, from the Old French. See exclude.
[edit] Pronunciation
- Rhymes: -uːs
[edit] Noun
sluice (plural sluices)
- An artificial passage for water, fitted with a valve or gate, as in a mill stream, for stopping or regulating the flow; also, a water gate or flood gate.
- Hence, an opening or channel through which anything flows; a source of supply.
- Each sluice of affluent fortune opened soon. -Harte.
- This home familiarity . . . opens the sluices of sensibility. -I. Taylor.
- The stream flowing through a flood gate.
- (mining) A long box or trough through which water flows, -- used for washing auriferous earth.
[edit] Translations
Translations
[edit] See also
- sluiceway
- sluice gate the sliding gate of a sluice
[edit] Verb
sluice (third-person singular simple present sluices, present participle sluicing, simple past and past participle sluiced)
- (rare) To emit by, or as by, flood gates. -Milton.
- To wet copiously, as by opening a sluice; as, to sluice meadows. Howitt.
- He dried his neck and face, which he had been sluicing with cold water. -De Quincey.
- To wash with, or in, a stream of water running through a sluice; as, to sluice earth or gold dust in mining.
[edit] References
- sluice in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
- For examples of the usage of this term see the citations page.
