Sluice /(?)/

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 or flood gate.
2. Hence, an opening or channel through which anything flows; a source of supply.

   Each sluice of affluent fortune opened soon.

   This home familiarity . . . opens the sluices of sensibility.

3. The stream flowing through a flood gate.
4. A long box or trough through which water flows, -- used for washing auriferous earth. (Mining)

imp. & p. p. Sluiced; p. pr. & vb. n. Sluicing

1. To emit by, or as by, flood gates. [R.]
2. To wet copiously, as by opening a sluice; as, to sluice meadows.

   He dried his neck and face, which he had been sluicing with cold water.

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