Sluice definition

escluse, écluse, exclusa, sclusa, from excludere, exclusum, to shut out: confer sluis sluice, from the Old French. See exclude.

An artificial 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.
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.
The stream flowing through a flood gate.
A long box or trough through which water flows, -- used for washing auriferous earth.

To emit by, or as by, flood gates. -Milton.
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.
To wash with, or in, a stream of water running through a sluice; as, to sluice earth or gold dust in mining.