'chute

Noun (1)

chute (plural chutes)

1. A framework, trough, or tube, upon or through which objects are made to slide from a higher to a lower level, or through which water passes to a wheel.
   • On reaching the slip, the barrow was wheeled off the truck onto a scaffolding gantry built out over the wall, and the concrete tipped down a corrugated iron chute on to a steel plate.1959 December, Richard Hope, “Narrow Gauge Landslip”, in Railway Magazine, page 866
2. A waterfall or rapid.
3. A pen or passageway to constrain the movement of an animal, such as livestock being loaded for transport; the pen in which an animal is confined before being released in a rodeo.
4. An extension to a straightway on either the home stretch or the backstretch, to avoid having a turn at the start of the race.

Noun (2)

chute (plural chutes)

1. (informal) A parachute.
   • Yet the initial IMF rescue plan was far from the parachute which it professed to be – the chute did open briefly but only for it to "Roman candle", the hapless victim left to plummet to earth with a sickening thud.2000, Callum Henderson, Asian Dawn, page 25
2. (broadly, slang) A spinnaker.

See all 10 meanings of chute