Definition of "sluice"

sluice

/sluːs/

noun
plural sluices
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.
  Quotations
  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.
  1693, [William] Congreve, The Old Batchelour, a Comedy. […], 2nd edition, London: […] Peter Buck, […], Act V, page 45
  Each sluice of affluent fortune open'd soon.
  1767, Walter Harte, Eulogius: Or, The Charitable Mason
  This home familiarity […] opens the sluices of sensibility.
  1832, [Isaac Taylor], Saturday Evening. […], London: Holdsworth and Ball
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.
verb
third-person singular simple present sluices, present participle sluicing, simple past and past participle sluiced
1. (transitive, rare) To emit by, or as by, flood gates.
  Quotations
  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.
  1667, John Milton, “Book I”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], […]; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, lines 700–704
2. (transitive) To wet copiously, as by opening a sluice
  Quotations
  Nine - mile Creek has been dug out again and again , and has been sluiced three times
  1855, William Howitt, Land, Labour and Gold; or, Two Years in Victoria
  […] he dried his neck and face, which he had been sluicing with cold water.
  1861, Thomas Hughes, chapter XIII, in Tom Brown at Oxford‎, London: Macmillan & Co.
  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.
  1993, Paul Theroux, Millroy the Magician, page 61
  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."
  2000, Laurel E. Fay, chapter 7, in Shostakovich: A Life, Oxford University Press, page 120
3. (transitive) To wash with, or in, a stream of water running through a sluice.
4. (transitive, more generally) To wash (down or out).
  Quotations
  […] he did plot the Duke of Gloucester's death, / Suggest his soon-believing adversaries, / And consequently, like a traitor coward, / Sluiced out his innocent soul through streams of blood
  1595 December 9 (first known performance), William Shakespeare, “The life and death of King Richard the Second”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act I, scene 1]
  And now men with a hose have come and are sluicing out the streets.
  1910, Lord Dunsany, “Bethmoora”, in A Dreamer's Tales‎, London: George Allen & Sons, page 68
  He also organized a bucket brigade for sluicing down the decks.
  1977, Timothy Findley, The Wars, Penguin Canada, published 1985, page 60
5. (intransitive) To flow, pour.
  Quotations
  In the trough behind the white wave / Helen shook her dark head, the water sluiced from her shoulders / And rose-tipped breasts.
  1932, Robinson Jeffers, “Thurso's Landing”, in The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers‎, New York: Random House, page 311
  Out of sight of the houses he took off his clothes and let the rain sluice down on his bare body.
  1934, George Orwell, chapter 23, in Burmese Days‎
  these are often my thoughts as my partner or my vis-a-vis spoons a berry into her mouth and I imagine it—see and hear it being chewed, the red juice running from its bursting pulp over her tongue, mingling with her saliva, slipping through the crevices between her teeth before sluicing down her throat and into her bloodstream.
  1980, Peter De Vries, chapter 12, in Consenting Adults, or The Duchess Will Be Furious, Penguin, pages 185–6
  The huge things which had already careered into flight, they were enormous slothful sacks of billowing skin, and where the light sluiced over their bodies, they glimmered acid-blue and bronze.
  1986, Tanith Lee, Delirium's Mistress, New York: Daw Books, Book Two, Part Two, Chapter 6, p. 240
6. (linguistics) To elide the complement in a coordinated wh-question. See sluicing.

Definition of "sluice"

sluice

noun

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verb

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