Sluice

Part of speech: noun (n.)

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. The stream flowing through a flood gate.

4. A long box or trough through which water flows, -- used for washing auriferous earth. Sluice gate, the sliding gate of a sluice.

Part of speech: verb (v.)

1. To emit by, or as by, flood gates. [R.] Milton.

2. 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.

3. To wash with, or in, a stream of water running through a sluice; as, to sluice eart or gold dust in mining.