Word Direct Answers

What does "sluice" mean?

Sluice: 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.

Additional senses

  1. 2.The stream flowing through a flood gate.
  2. 3.(Mining) A long box or trough through which water flows, -- used for washing auriferous earth. Sluice gate, the sliding gate of a sluice.
  3. 4.To emit by, or as by, flood gates. [R.] Milton.
  4. 5.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.
  5. 6.To wash with, or in, a stream of water running through a sluice; as, to sluice eart or gold dust in mining.

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