canal

American  

[kuh-nal] / kəˈnæl /

noun

• canals
  plural

1. an artificial waterway for navigation, irrigation, etc.

2. a long narrow arm of the sea penetrating far inland.

3. a tubular passage or cavity for food, air, etc., especially in an animal or plant; a duct.

4. channel; watercourse.

5. Astronomy. one of the long, narrow, dark lines on the surface of the planet Mars, as seen telescopically from the earth.

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verb (used with object)

canalled, canaled, canalling, canaling

1. to make a canal through.

canal British  

/ kəˈnæl /

noun

1. an artificial waterway constructed for navigation, irrigation, water power, etc

2. any of various tubular passages or ducts

   the alimentary canal

3. any of various elongated intercellular spaces in plants

4. astronomy any of the indistinct surface features of Mars originally thought to be a network of channels but not seen on close-range photographs. They are caused by an optical illusion in which faint geological features appear to have a geometric structure

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verb

1. to dig a canal through

2. to provide with a canal or canals

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• canals
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of canal

First recorded in 1400–50; late Middle English: “waterpipe, tubular passage,” from Latin canālis, perhaps equivalent to can(na) “reed, pipe” ( see cane) + -ālis -al ¹; canal def. 5 a mistranslation of Italian canali “channels,” the term used by G. V. Schiaparelli

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Explanation

A canal is a long, man-made strip of water used for irrigation or boat access to a bigger body of water, like the famous Erie Canal, which connects the Hudson River to Lake Erie. Canal is related to the word channel, and all its different shades of meaning have to do with tunnel shaped spaces that carry liquid from one place to another. Besides man-made irrigation canals, canals that connect boat docks to rivers and oceans, or street-like canals in boat cities like Amsterdam, there are canals in your body, like your nasal canal, or the birth canal you came out of. It's also a verb meaning "to dig a canal."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

canal canals canaled canalled canalling

Because the treatment needs to reach the central nervous system, it is administered through an injection into the spinal canal.

From Science Daily ● Oct. 13, 2026

Residents in Brentford have raised concerns about sewage flowing into the local canal network, with dead animals washing up over the summer.

From BBC ● Sep. 30, 2026

Thidarat Silsuwan, who lives alone in her partially submerged house along the Premprachakorn canal, said she did not want to go to a shelter as she worked to clean up and salvage her belongings.

From Barron's ● Sep. 27, 2026

His surviving notes capture ordinary moments from daily life, including records of how much he spent on food for his children along the canal.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 26, 2026

The canal was an engineering feat, carving out a fifty-mile-long passage across the Isthmus of Panama that connected the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

From "Death on the River of Doubt" by Samantha Seiple

The city is built on former marshlands and is intersected by a network of canals, many of them heavily flooded by the rains.

From Barron's ● Sep. 28, 2026

During the last floods in 2023, many siphoned water from the brimming canals to their fields.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 26, 2026

The rain is expected to continue into Sunday, raising fears that more canals could burst their banks.

From BBC ● Sep. 26, 2026

Data-center spending is greater than that for canals, railroads, and grid combined—creating jobs and stock-market wealth, while boosting inflation and crowding out housing.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 24, 2026

The largest canals were seventy-five to eighty feet across and twenty feet deep.

From "An Indigenous People’s History of the United States" by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

The warmth at his heart annulled whatever of chill stole in at the grayness of the canaled streets of the northern city after the color and glow of Porto.

From Dreamers of the Ghetto by Israel Zangwill

Hindu temples, for the many Guyanese descended from laborers from the Indian subcontinent, dot Georgetown’s canalled streets.

From New York Times ● May 9, 2010

And he should never be blocked in: he should at most be canalled.

From The Invisible Censor by Francis Hackett

When I got old enough, and had money enough, I was determined to go west and seek my fortune; for I always felt that canalling was, somehow, beneath what I wanted to do and become.

From Vandemark's Folly by Herbert Quick

The stern part was taken down the long upper level by a small tug, but teams were employed in towing for all the remaining portions of the canalling.

From A Century of Sail and Steam on the Niagara River by Barlow Cumberland

We had a good deal of difficulty at first in our canalling, especially in meeting and passing vessels.

From A Century of Sail and Steam on the Niagara River by Barlow Cumberland

It consists of canalling, improving river navigation, rail-roads, and common turnpike roads.

From A New Guide for Emigrants to the West by John Mason Peck

Indeed, I never can believe I am at sea at all, on the Atlantic, the passages between New-York and Portsmouth being little more than so much canalling along a tow-path.

From Home as Found by James Fenimore Cooper

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