canalize
Americanverb (used with object)
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to make a canal or canals through.
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to convert into a canal.
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to divide (a stream) into reaches with locks or dams, usually to maintain navigable depths.
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to divert into certain channels; give a certain direction to or provide a certain outlet for.
verb
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to provide with or convert into a canal or canals
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to give a particular direction to or provide an outlet for; channel
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to divide a channel into separate reaches controlled by dams and weirs to aid navigation, control water levels, generate power, etc
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of canalize
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
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
The modern movement is a conscious effort to direct and canalize the stupendous energy of modern civilization between its proper architectural embankments.
From Time Magazine Archive
To have peace, the nations must forgo the urge to canalize to fixed ends the productive energies of private citizens.
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
Its avenues of attack canalized by a water-broken country, the Armored Force ran into traps, anti-tank posts.
From Time Magazine Archive
It lies in a pleasant and fertile valley, and is built partly on an island and partly on both sides of the river, which is canalized from this point to the estuary.
From The Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia Volume 1 of 28 by Project Gutenberg
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
Slowly and patiently they are canalizing the spirit that at once directs, energizes and safeguards its operation.
From Messages to America by Shoghi Effendi
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)
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
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)
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
