SLUICE

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 sluice of affluent fortune opened soon. Harte. This home familiarity . . . opens the sluices of sensibility. I. Taylor. The stream flowing through a flood gate. A long box or trough through which water flows, -- used for washing auriferous earth. Sluice gate, the sliding gate of a sluice.

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.

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. | A water gate or floodgate. | Hence, an opening or channel through which anything flows; a source of supply. | The stream flowing through a floodgate. | A long box or trough through which water flows, used for washing auriferous earth. | An instance of wh-stranding ellipsis, or sluicing.

To emit by, or as by, flood gates. | To wet copiously, as by opening a sluice | To wash with, or in, a stream of water running through a sluice. | To wash (down or out). | To flow, pour. | To elide the complement in a coordinated wh-question. See sluicing.