sluicing

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sluice

(slo͞os)

a. An artificial channel for conducting water, with a valve or gate to regulate the flow: sluices connecting a reservoir with irrigated fields.

b. A valve or gate used in such a channel; a floodgate: open sluices to flood a dry dock. Also called sluice gate.

2. A body of water impounded behind a floodgate.

3. A sluiceway.

4. A long inclined trough, as for carrying logs or separating gold ore.

v. sluiced, sluic·ing, sluic·es

v.tr.

1. To flood or drench with or as if with a flow of released water.

2. To wash with water flowing in a sluice: sluicing sediment for gold.

3. To draw off or let out by a sluice: sluice floodwater.

4. To send (logs, for example) down a sluice.

v.intr.

To flow out from or as if from a sluice.

[Middle English scluse, from Old French escluse, from Late Latin exclūsa, from Latin, feminine past participle of exclūdere, to shut out; see exclude.]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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Adj.

sluicing - pouring from or as if from a sluice; "the sluicing rain"

Mentioned in ?

References in classic literature ?

And when she come she was hot and red and cross, and couldn't hardly wait for the blessing; and then she went to sluicing out coffee with one hand and cracking the handiest child's head with her thimble with the other, and says:

View in context

It is sluicing off the gravel, deepening the ditch, and altering the slope which was the old bend of the river.

View in context

Sluicing has been viewed, arguably more than most other types of ellipsis, as a case of surface-based PF-deletion (Ross 1969, Hankamer and Sag 1976, Merchant 2001, van Craenenbroeck 2010, Temmerman 2013).

One of the classical arguments in favor of a PF-deletion approach to sluicing is the marking of case in languages such as German (Ross 1969: 253-4) (note that wen is accusative, and wem is dative):

In this regard, P-stranding in Dutch sluicing is different from P-stranding in English sluicing:

Sluicing in Dutch: a problem for PF-deletion approaches

Sluicing (sloos--ing), washing buckets of ore in running water, is easier.

Perhaps you want to try your hand at sluicing. This method involves a scrub brush, a sluice screen, a bucket of ore, and a sluiceway, which is a long wooden trough with running water.

Like sluicing, shake the screen in the water, wash away the dirt, and check your stones.

Dig for gemstones

English sluicing presents some puzzling patterns: as expected, it operates over syntactically related antecedents and orphans, but it also operates over those that show a less direct relationship.

This view could leave sluicing ((1)-(3)) to be explained in analogous terms.

Sluicing is an anaphoric rule licensed by some relationship between a stranded wh-phrase and its antecedent in another clause/sentence.