SLUICING

sluicing

(adjective) pouring from or as if from a sluice; “the sluicing rain”

Source: WordNet® 3.1

Verb

sluicing

present participle of sluice

Noun

sluicing (plural sluicings)

The act by which something is sluiced; a copious wetting; a drenching.

(linguistics) A kind of ellipsis, introduced by an interrogative, where (usually) everything except the interrogative is elided from the clause, as in "I like him, but I don't know why".

Source: Wiktionary

SLUICE

Sluice, n. Etym: [OF. escluse, F. écluse, LL. exclusa, sclusa, from L. excludere, exclusum, to shut out: cf. D. sluis sluice, from the Old French. See Exclude.]

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. (Mining)

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

Sluice, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Sluiced; p. pr. & vb. n. Sluicing.]

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.

Source: Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary 1913 Edition