sluice

Etymology

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 (“I shut out, I exclude”) (English exclude). Cognate to Dutch sluis.

noun

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.
   Each sluice of affluent fortune open'd soon. 1767, Walter Harte, Eulogius: Or, The Charitable Mason
4. The stream flowing through a floodgate.
5. (mining) A long box or trough through which water flows, used for washing auriferous earth.
6. (linguistics) An instance of wh-stranding ellipsis, or sluicing.

verb

1. (transitive, rare) To emit by, or as by, flood gates.
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 times 1855, 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.
   Millroy often described his kidneys—how he flushed them out. His lungs—the way he hyperventilated them. His heart—how he got it pumping, sluicing its gates and chambers. 1993, Paul Theroux, Millroy the Magician, page 61
   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. My orchestration is crude, in keeping with Musorgsky." 2000, Laurel E. Fay, chapter 7, in Shostakovich: A Life, Oxford University Press, page 120
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. (transitive, more generally) To wash (down or out).
   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
   He also organized a bucket brigade for sluicing down the decks. 1977, Timothy Findley, The Wars, Penguin Canada, published 1985, page 60
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
   these are often my thoughts as my partner or my vis-a-vis spoons a berry into her mouth and I imagine it—see and hear it being chewed, the red juice running from its bursting pulp over her tongue, mingling with her saliva, slipping through the crevices between her teeth before sluicing down her throat and into her bloodstream. 1980, Peter De Vries, chapter 12, in Consenting Adults, or The Duchess Will Be Furious, Penguin, pages 185–6
   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
6. (linguistics) To elide the complement in a coordinated wh-question. See sluicing.