Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb British To convert a river or other waterway into a canal.
  • verb British To channel the flow of something.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb direct the flow of
  • verb provide (a city) with a canal

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

canal +‎ -ise

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word canalise.

Examples

  • Its stated aims were to purchase boats, canalise the river to make it navigable, and build warehouses and other infrastructure for commerce.

    Did you know? Steamboats on Lake Chapala. 2008

  • Its stated aims were to purchase boats, canalise the river to make it navigable, and build warehouses and other infrastructure for commerce.

    Did you know? Steamboats on Lake Chapala. 2008

  • Whence arises the power of the _sentiment intérieur_ to canalise the energies of the organism, so to direct and co-ordinate them that they build up purposive structures, or effect purposive actions (as in all instinctive behaviour)?

    Form and Function A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology

  • But most artists have got to canalise their emotion and concentrate their energies on some more definite and more maniable problem than that of making something that shall be aesthetically

    Art Clive Bell 1922

  • Artists must canalise their emotion, they must concentrate their energies on some definite problem.

    Art Clive Bell 1922

  • The importance of the first lessens as men learn to dig wells and to canalise springs; the two last, defence and communication, remain attached to river settlements to a much later date, and are apparent in all the history of the Thames.

    The Historic Thames Hilaire Belloc 1911

  • They canalise for their own security a torrent which, undisciplined, would serve but to destroy.

    Avril Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance Hilaire Belloc 1911

  • Acting with the blessing of the Viceroy, Octavian Hume had sought to create an organisation which would canalise the protests of India's slowly growing educated classes into a moderate, responsible body prepared to engage in gentlemanly dialogue with India's English rulers. "

    In Defence of Marxism 2009

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • "Get into touch with the Subconscious and you are in touch with the Universe. Inspiration, in fact. You follow me?"

    "Perfectly, perfectly," said Denis. "But don't you find that the Universe sometimes sends you very irrelevant messages?"

    "I don't allow it to," Mr. Barbecue-Smith replied. "I canalise it. I bring it down through pipes to work the turbines of my conscious mind."

    - Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow

    March 28, 2008

  • Haha! Oh, if only it were possible.

    March 28, 2008

  • I enjoyed this citation even beyond the word. Thank you yarb.

    March 28, 2008

  • chart truths (chartreuse)

    April 30, 2010