Word.ws English Dictionary

sluice

/sluːs/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Northern Ireland/ˈslʉs/

sluice noun: 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.

sluice: an artificial passage for water, fitted with a valve or gate, for example in a canal lock or a mill...
Image: Whippsinc, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

sluice (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.
    • 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, Will[iam] Congreve, The Old Batchelour, a Comedy. […], London: […] Peter Buck, […], →OCLC, Act V, scene i, page 45
    • Each sluice of affluent fortune open'd soon.1767, Walter Harte, Eulogius: Or, The Charitable Mason
  4. The stream flowing through a floodgate.
  5. A long box or trough through which water flows, used for washing auriferous earth.
  6. An instance of wh-stranding ellipsis, or sluicing.
    • Another powerful argument that sluices are CPs comes from the positional distribution of sluiced wh-phrases in a variety of languages.2001, Jason Merchant, “The Syntax of Sluicing”, in The Syntax of Silence, →DOI, page 45

Verb

sluice (third-person singular simple present sluices, present participle sluicing, simple past and past participle sluiced)

  1. (rare, transitive) To emit by, or as by, flood gates.
    • 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], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished...
  2. (transitive) To wet copiously, as by opening a sluice
    • Nine - mile Creek has been dug out again and again , and has been sluiced three times1855, 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.
  3. (transitive) To wash with, or in, a stream of water running through a sluice.
    • to sluice earth or gold dust in a sluice box in placer mining
  4. (broadly, transitive) To wash (down or out).
    • […] 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 blood1595 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...
    • 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
  5. (intransitive) To flow, pour.
    • 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
  6. To elide the complement in a coordinated wh-question. See sluicing.
    • In sum, then, it is possible to sluice over a correlate in a relative clause just in case the independent constraints regulating the distribution of (E-type) anaphora are met: again, we see that nothing particular to sluicing need be said.2001, Jason Merchant, “Deletio redux”, in The Syntax of Silence, →DOI, page 221

sluice meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam

sluice in Tamil

கண்மாய், கண்ணாறு, கலிங்கல், மடை, மதகு, மடைக்கதவு

sluice in Urdu

آب بند

sluice in Bengali

জলকপাট, কৃত্রিম জলপথ

sluice in Malayalam

sluice, water channel
മട maṭa
More languagesFewer languages
sluice in Kannada
ತೂಬು, ಮದಗ, ಮದಗು, ಕೋಡಿ
sluice in Arabic
فُتْحَةُ التَّصْرِيف futḥatu t-taṣrīf
sluice in Indonesian
sluis
sluice in Vietnamese
cống

Examples of sluice in a sentence

  • This home familiarity […] opens the sluices of sensibility.1832, [Isaac Taylor], Saturday Evening. […], London: Holdsworth and Ball, →OCLC:
  • 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.2000, Laurel E. Fay, chapter 7, in Shostakovich: A Life, Oxford University Press, page 120:
  • 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:

All 22 example sentences with sluice

Forms of sluice

Noun
pluralsluices
Verb
third-person singular presentsluices
present participlesluicing
past participlesluiced
pastsluiced

Plural of sluice: sluices

Origin of sluice

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.

Words formed from sluice

Phrases with sluice

Words that rhyme with sluice

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about sluice

What does sluice mean?
Sluice means 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.
What is sluice in Tamil?
Sluice in Tamil is கண்மாய், கண்ணாறு, கலிங்கல். See Sluice meaning in Tamil.
How do you use sluice in a sentence?
This home familiarity […] opens the sluices of sensibility.
What part of speech is sluice?
Sluice can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce sluice?
Sluice is pronounced /sluːs/.
What is the plural of sluice?
The plural of sluice is sluices.

Words near sluice in the dictionary

  1. slugs out
  2. slugthrower
  3. slugthrowers
  4. slugworm
  5. slugworms
  6. sluice
  7. sluice box
  8. sluice boxes
  9. sluice gate
  10. sluice gates
  11. sluice one's bolt

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sluice (page history and authors); sluice (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); sluice (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); sluice (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); മട (Malayalam) (page history and authors); sluice (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-sluice.wav.

Cite this entry: “sluice.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sluice. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.