sluice

Meanings

Noun

  • An artificial passage for water, fitted with a valve or gate, for example in a canal lock or a mill stream, for stopping or regulating the flow.
  • A water gate or floodgate.
  • Hence, an opening or channel through which anything flows; a source of supply.
  • The stream flowing through a floodgate.
  • A long box or trough through which water flows, used for washing auriferous earth.
  • An instance of wh-stranding ellipsis, or sluicing.

Verb

  • To emit by, or as by, flood gates.
  • To wet copiously, as by opening a sluice
  • To wash with, or in, a stream of water running through a sluice.
  • To wash (down or out).
  • To flow, pour.
  • To elide the complement in a coordinated wh-question. See sluicing.

Origin

  • From Middle English sluse, alteration of scluse, from Anglo-Norman escluse ("sluice, floodgate"), from Late Latin exclusa ("extrusion, gate"), from Latin exclūsus, form of exclūdō (English exclude). Cognate to Dutch sluis.

Modern English dictionary

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