[f. CHANNEL sb.1]
1. trans. To form channels in; to wear or cut into channels; to furrow, groove, flute.
1596. Shaks., 1 Hen. IV., I. i. 7. No more shall trenching Warre channell her fields.
1644. Evelyn, Mem. (1857), I. 127. Four wreathed columns, partly channelled.
1781. Cowper, Truth, 174. The streaming tears Channel her cheeks.
1865. Geikie, Scen. & Geol. Scot., vi. 116. Heathery slopes, channelled with brooks.
1869. Gillmore, Rept. & Birds, Introd. 190. The sides of the mandible deeply channelled with nostrils.
b. spec. To provide (a street) with a channel or gutter for the conveyance of surface-water.
1875. Glen, Public Health Act, IV. (ed. 9), 144. The Urban Authority shall … cause all such streets to be levelled, paved, metalled, flagged, channelled, altered, and repaired.
2. To excavate or cut out as a channel.
1816. Monthly Rev., LXXXI. 246. That vast aqueduct … was then channeled by Sir Hugh Middleton.
1862. D. Wilson, Preh. Man, iii. (1865), 43. The Ashley River has channeled for itself a course through the eocene and post-pliocene formations of South Carolina.
1871. Smiles, Charac., i. (1876), 16. ‘The strong man and the waterfall’ says the proverb ‘channel their own path.’
3. To convey through (or as through) a channel.
1648. Power, in Sir T. Browne’s Wks. (1852), III. 485. The urine is channelled all along, with the blood, through almost all the parenchymata of the body.
1657. R. Carpenter, Astrol. proved harmless, 1. We know not the mysterious … Things of God, but as they have been channel’d to us by God himself in divine Revelation.
1837. Newman, Par. Serm. (ed. 2), III. xiv. 213. Gifts of mind … are … channelled out to the many through the few.
† 4. intr. To pass by (or as by) a channel. Obs.
1664. Power, Exp. Philos., I. 38. If you observe her [the great Black Snail]…, you shall see a little stream of clouds, channel up her belly from her tail to her head.
