Word.ws English Dictionary

sluice gate

sluice gate noun: a portal which may be opened or closed to allow or prevent the passage of water through a man-made channel.

sluice gate: a portal which may be opened or closed to allow or prevent the passage of water through a man-made...
Image: Sten, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

sluice gate (plural sluice gates)

  1. A portal which may be opened or closed to allow or prevent the passage of water through a man-made channel.
    • "Has the miller a strong high dam to his pond, and a good stout sluice-gate at the end?"1877, R. D. Blackmore, chapter 42, in Erema: My Father's Sin
    • He also built two dams and a sluice gate that frees dammed water to operate a 14-foot undershot waterwheel.1987 September 20, Carolyn Battista, “For Sale: Buildings and Land, Ideal for Old Blacksmith”, in New York Times, retrieved 09 Jan 2012
  2. (figuratively) Something which restrains or releases a substantial volume, a flood, of activity, emotion, etc.
    • [A]nd then when the fountain of her love was opened, and the sluice gate of her displeasure removed, she told him how she would pray for him till he came back safe from the wars.1850, Anthony Trollope, chapter 7, in La Vendée
    • I could see her brave spirit quelling the riot of her emotions, shutting down the sluice-gate of tears.1896, Gilbert Parker, chapter 10, in Seats Of The Mighty

sluice gate meaning in Tamil and Arabic

sluice gate in Tamil

மதகு கதவு, மடைவாய்

sluice gate in Arabic

portal to allow passage of water
خَوْخَة ḵawḵa

Examples of sluice gate in a sentence

  • Golam Kibria was found floating through a sluice gate in a nearby sewer Monday morning, bringing the death toll to 74.2009 March 2, “After the Mutiny, Questions About Bangladesh's Army”, in Time:
  • Betancourt is the sluice gate for communism in Venezuela.1963 February 19, Bertram B. Johansson, “Focus on Betancourt”, in Christian Science Monitor, page 1:
  • I must have opened up some sluice gate inside her and everything that had been dammed up came spilling out.1995, Gary Eberle, Angel Strings: A Novel, →ISBN, page 22:
  • The Village Voice put its sassiest junior movie critic (me) on the Meyer beat, opening the sluice gate to torrents of mannered enthusiasm.2002 August 2, “Thanks for the Mammaries”, in Time:

Forms of sluice gate

pluralsluice gates
alternative formsluice-gate
alternative formsluicegate

Words formed from sluice gate

Questions about sluice gate

What does sluice gate mean?
Sluice gate means a portal which may be opened or closed to allow or prevent the passage of water through a man-made channel.
What is sluice gate in Tamil?
Sluice gate in Tamil is மதகு கதவு, மடைவாய். See Sluice gate meaning in Tamil.
How do you use sluice gate in a sentence?
Golam Kibria was found floating through a sluice gate in a nearby sewer Monday morning, bringing the death toll to 74.
What part of speech is sluice gate?
Sluice gate is a noun.
What is the plural of sluice gate?
The plural of sluice gate is sluice gates.

Words near sluice gate in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sluice gate (page history and authors); sluice gate (Tamil 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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Cite this entry: “sluice gate.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sluice_gate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.