canalize

American  

[kan-l-ahyz, kuh-nal-ahyz] / ˈkæn lˌaɪz, kəˈnæl aɪz /

especially British, canalise

verb (used with object)

canalized, canalizing

1. to make a canal or canals through.

2. to convert into a canal.

3. to divide (a stream) into reaches with locks or dams, usually to maintain navigable depths.

4. to divert into certain channels; give a certain direction to or provide a certain outlet for.

---

canalize British  

/ ˈkænəˌlaɪz /

verb

1. to provide with or convert into a canal or canals

2. to give a particular direction to or provide an outlet for; channel

3. to divide a channel into separate reaches controlled by dams and weirs to aid navigation, control water levels, generate power, etc

---

Other Word Forms

• canalization
  noun
• uncanalized
  adjective

Etymology

Origin of canalize

First recorded in 1850–55; canal + -ize

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

canalize canalized canalizing

Making music, “you are away, somehow, from real tragedies, but you can canalize everything that you are feeling and suffering from into something that becomes a moment,” Tanja continued.

From New York Times ● Feb. 2, 2023

Some became conscious of the role a state could play in intervening in the economy in order to curb and canalize democracy.

From Slate ● Apr. 7, 2017

To have peace, the nations must forgo the urge to canalize to fixed ends the productive energies of private citizens.

From Time Magazine Archive

They also went into shelf hardware, planned to establish retail stores to canalize large production.

From Time Magazine Archive

Craft can harness this sort of explosive force, it can control it, or persuade it, or canalize it to certain issues, but it cannot create it.

From First and Last by Belloc, Hilaire

Our polluted, chopped up, canalized, dammed and damned rivers.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 7, 2020

They do this to restore, to the fullest extent possible, the habitats of and —to put the natural curves back in canalized rivers, for instance, so the waters can flow as they once did.

From Scientific American ● Feb. 15, 2013

Into these cisterns they evidently canalized the rains, which descended by a trough from the hills and of which the supply was undoubtedly scant.

From The New Yorker ● May 6, 1955

It is no narrow, canalized affair of jealous Europe's pesky little Mediterranean or rebellious Egypt's Suez, but a broad route over the bounding main.

From Time Magazine Archive

The Brother Paul hocuspocus, which he quickly dropped, had merely caught and canalized an abounding energy that would otherwise have flowed aimlessly in a stagnant world.

From Greener Than You Think by Moore, Ward

It is important to turn them from these in order to tranquilize and regulate their course by damming them up and canalizing them.

From The Sexual Question A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study by Forel, Auguste

Improvements now under way in clearing and canalizing these rivers will add about five hundred miles of additional water-way.

From Commercial Geography A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges by Redway, Jacques W. (Jacques Wardlaw)

Notwithstanding the work already done, such as canalizing and regulating the rivers, the erection of dams, &c., the problems of preventing inundations, and of reclaiming the marshes, have not yet been satisfactorily solved.

From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 13, Slice 8 "Hudson River" to "Hurstmonceaux" by Various

It must be remembered that before the canalizing of the Thames the influence of the tide was perceptible at least as high as Staines, where was also a crossing-place of immemorial antiquity.

From Early Britain—Roman Britain by Conybeare, Edward

Twenty-five years of mistakes, miscalculations, improvidence, hundreds of millions thrown away, in the great work of canalizing the country, have proved it to the most incredulous.

From System of Economical Contradictions; or, the Philosophy of Misery by Proudhon, P.-J. (Pierre-Joseph)