sluice
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: simple
Topics: business
human-sciences
linguistics
mining
sciences
Etymology: 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 (“to shut out, to exclude”) (English exclude). Cognate to Dutch sluis.
Inflected forms:
form: sluices
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: sluices
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: sluicing
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: sluiced
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: sluiced
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: 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.
pos: noun
gloss: A water gate or floodgate.
pos: noun
gloss: Hence, an opening or channel through which anything flows; a source of supply.
pos: noun
examples: 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.
gloss: The stream flowing through a floodgate.
pos: noun
gloss: A long box or trough through which water flows, used for washing auriferous earth.
pos: noun
gloss: An instance of wh-stranding ellipsis, or sluicing.
pos: noun
gloss: To emit by, or as by, flood gates.
pos: verb
tags: rare
transitive
examples: 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.
gloss: To wet copiously, as by opening a sluice
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: 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."
gloss: To wash with, or in, a stream of water running through a sluice.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: to sluice earth or gold dust in a sluice box in placer mining
gloss: To wash (down or out).
pos: verb
tags: broadly
transitive
examples: […] 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
And now men with a hose have come and are sluicing out the streets.
He also organized a bucket brigade for sluicing down the decks.
gloss: To flow, pour.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: In the trough behind the white wave / Helen shook her dark head, the water sluiced from her shoulders / And rose-tipped breasts.
Out of sight of the houses he took off his clothes and let the rain sluice down on his bare body.
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.
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.
gloss: To elide the complement in a coordinated wh-question. See sluicing.
pos: verb
Derived words: Seaton Sluice
sluice gate
sluiceless
sluicelike
sluicery
sluice valve
sluiceway
sluicy
sluiceable
sluice one's bolt
sluice out
sluicer
unsluice
Translations: