| Definitions | | sluice |
|
noun
- An artifical passage for water, fitted with a valve or gate, as in a mill stream, for stopping or regulating the flow; also, a water gate of flood gate.
- Hence, an opening or channel through which anything flows; a source of supply.
- Each 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.
verb (sluic, ing)
- To emit by, or as by, flood gates. R. 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 eart or gold dust in mining.
Etymology: escluse, écluse, exclusa, sclusa, from excludere, exclusum, to shut out: confer sluis sluice, from the Old French. See exclude.
Supplemental Details:Sponsor an extended definition for sluice for as little as $10 per month. Click here to contact us.
| |
|
