How to Use sluice in a Sentence

sluice

noun
  • His tiebreaking hit was the speck of gold in so many dull sluice pans.
    — Andrew Baggarly, The Mercury News, 10 May 2017
  • On a recent morning, not a drop came out of the dam’s sluices.
    — Norimitsu Onishi, New York Times, 12 Apr. 2016
  • Buy a bag of mixed rough stones at the Gift Shop and head for the sluice.
    — Courant Community, 10 Apr. 2018
  • Split the difference with a plate of both, topped with meaty bolognese and a sluice of béchamel.
    — Mark Kurlyandchik, Detroit Free Press, 6 Sep. 2019
  • The rocks fall to the ground in a big pile, and silt settles in riffles on the sloping ramp of the sluice.
    — Nell Zink, Harper's magazine, 28 Oct. 2019
  • It is thought that water was once carried through this sluice in terra-cotta pipes.
    — New York Times, 20 Apr. 2022
  • That date, a watershed of life, not just of hers, the sluice gate of a dam on the river that blocks the waters’ flow.
    — Claudio Magris, Harper's Magazine, 25 May 2021
  • Or, slice the leeks lengthwise and hold the cut sides under a tap, letting the cascade of water sluice away the dirt.
    — New York Times, 17 May 2021
  • Dump the remaining gravel through a sluice box to remove lighter sand and small rocks, which filter into a gold pan.
    — Trevor Hughes, USA Today, 27 Feb. 2026
  • The man ended up trapped at the entrance of a sluice pipe that runs under the roadway as his wife called 911.
    — Fox News, 25 June 2020
  • Recipes might include sluices of soy sauce and calamansi and toppings of shrimp heads, quail eggs, shucked oysters or chicharron.
    — Ligaya Mishan, New York Times, 12 Mar. 2018
  • Some residents said the country club contribues to flooding by opening its sluice gate when rain is forecast.
    — Evy Lewis, Chicago Tribune, 29 Apr. 2026
  • In summer, runoff from cloudbursts etches into the softer limestones and sluices through the deep runnels.
    — National Geographic, 19 Aug. 2019
  • Charlie got into the shower, letting the hot water sluice off the rest of the blood on her back and whatever had dried in her hair.
    — Maureen Lee Lenker, Entertainment Weekly, 19 Sep. 2025
  • Buttresses at the dam’s concrete sluice gates, controlling the flow of water, have thinned from damage.
    — USA Today, 17 Nov. 2022
  • Kids can dump their mining rough into a mining sluice outside the cave entrance and discover their treasures.
    — Amy Schwabe, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 18 Oct. 2019
  • In the nearest crater, the crewmen were running a pump off a small generator, washing mud toward a sluice with a hose.
    — Jon Lee Anderson, The New Yorker, 4 Nov. 2019
  • The archways are furnished with sluice gates that can open to allow excess water to pass through in periods of flooding.
    — Encyclopedia Britannica, 8 May 2026
  • The standard mining setup consists of a loud pump, a heavy hose, a conveyor belt going up, and a sluice box going down.
    — Nell Zink, Harper's magazine, 28 Oct. 2019
  • And the influence of the money power goes beyond the money that sluices into campaigns.
    — Charles P. Pierce, Esquire, 8 Aug. 2017
  • Suction dredge miners use an underwater hose to suck up gravel and sort it for gold in a sluice box mounted on a watercraft.
    — Keith Ridler, San Diego Union-Tribune, 1 Oct. 2019
  • Our son delighted in sifting through mining rough in the water sluice to discover fool's gold, rose quartz, malachite and lapis lazuli.
    — Kristen Jordan Shamus, Detroit Free Press, 16 July 2017
  • This pond also treats some of the runoff from Hess Road and uses a sluice gate to remove salts and other pollutants.
    — The Aegis, 25 Jan. 2018
  • Suction dredging sucks the river bottom up and through a sluice to isolate gold flakes; then the sediment is sent back into the river.
    — Rebecca Horne, Discover Magazine, 27 Sep. 2010
  • Mining, for the Joneses, involved a bulldozer and a steel, 100-foot sluice box.
    — Author: Abigail Curtis, Anchorage Daily News, 15 May 2020
  • For many critics, this sluice of cash was not the only troubling feature of Citizens United.
    — Kim Phillips-Fein, The New Republic, 29 Mar. 2018
  • Water poured into the Full Basin through sluice gates at high tide, and was let out of the Receiving Basin at low tide.
    — Courtney Humphries, BostonGlobe.com, 28 Apr. 2018
  • Or it may be charred twice, pulled apart and tucked, still warm, into a whole-wheat roti made to order, with a final sluice of tomato and mint chutneys and a scattering of onions and cilantro.
    — Ligaya Mishan, New York Times, 31 Aug. 2017
  • Water that sluices through the dike during the wet season may be enough to bring some fish farms back to what was once the main part of the lake, but that's—quite literally—just a drop in the bucket.
    — Ken Jennings, Condé Nast Traveler, 25 June 2018
  • Another signature activity will be gemstone mining, a sluice where children can pick out rocks, shells and gemstones.
    — Mark Eddington, The Salt Lake Tribune, 11 Dec. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'sluice.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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