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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.

An artificial channel into which water is let by a sluice; specifically, a trough constructed over the bed of a stream, so that logs, lumber, or rubbish can be floated down to some convenient place of delivery.

To sluice; to open the sluice or sluices of; to let flow; to discharge. Dryden.

A wall built across the ditch of a fortification, with a sluice gate to regulate the height of water in the ditch on both sides of the wall.

A sluice used in returning water to a channel after depositing its sediment on the flooded land. Knight.

A reservoir and sluiceway beside a navigable stream, just above a shoal, so that the stream may pour in water as boats pass, and thus bear them over the shoal. Flash wheel (Mech.), a paddle wheel made to revolve in a breast or curved water way, by which water is lifted from the lower to the higher level.…

A sluice in embankments against the sea, for letting out the land waters, when the tide is out. [Written also gowt.]

In hydraulic mining, gratings used to catch and throw out large stones from the sluices. [Local, U. S.] Raymond.

A flood gate; a a sluice gate. Ainsworth.

A small gate in sluices or lock gates to admit or let off water; - - also called clough.

A trough or sluice having cleats, grooves, or steps across the bottom for holding quicksilver and catching particles of gold when auriferous earth is washed; also, one of the cleats, grooves, or steps in such a trough. Also called ripple.

A sluice or lock, as in a river, to make it more navigable. [Obs.] Pepys.

Falling copiously or in streams, as from a sluice. And oft whole sheets descend of sluicy rain. Dryden.

A sluiceway or passage for superfluous water in a reservoir, to prevent too great pressure on the dam.

A flume or sluice in which ores are separated from the slimes in which they are contained.

y which a supply of water is furnished for useful or ornamental purposes, including dams, sluices, pumps, aqueducts, distributing pipes, fountains, etc.; -- used chiefly in the plural.