Meaning

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..

Definitions by Sense

1. 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.
2. A water gate or floodgate.
3. Hence, an opening or channel through which anything flows; a source of supply.
4. The stream flowing through a floodgate.
5. (mining) A long box or trough through which water flows, used for washing auriferous earth.
6. (linguistics) An instance of wh-stranding ellipsis, or sluicing.
7. (transitive, rare) To emit by, or as by, flood gates.
8. (transitive) To wet copiously, as by opening a sluice

Example Sentences

At leaſt, I'm ſure I can fiſh it out of her. She's the very Sluce to her Lady's Secrets;—'Tis but ſetting her Mill agoing, and I can drein her of 'em all.

Each sluice of affluent fortune open'd soon.

This home familiarity […] opens the sluices of sensibility.

Nigh on the plain, in many cells prepared, / That underneath had veins of liquid fire / Sluiced from the lake, a second multitude / With wondrous art founded the massy ore, / Severing each kind, and scummed the bullion-dross.

Nine - mile Creek has been dug out again and again , and has been sluiced three times

[…] he dried his neck and face, which he had been sluicing with cold water.

Millroy often described his kidneys—how he flushed them out. His lungs—the way he hyperventilated them. His heart—how he got it pumping, sluicing its gates and chambers.

Many years later, in 1953, Shostakovich summarized his dissatisfactions with the competition more bluntly: "Rimsky-Korsakov groomed, waved, and sluiced Musorgsky with eau de cologne. My orchestration is crude, in keeping with Musorgsky."

Word Forms

• sluices
• sluicing
• sluiced

Synonyms for sluice

Related Words

When Should You Use Sluice?

Use sluice when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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