Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To supply (land or crops) with water by means of pipes, sprinklers, ditches, or streams.
  • intransitive verb To wash out (a body cavity or wound) with water or a medicated fluid.
  • intransitive verb To irrigate land or crops.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To pass a liquid over or through; moisten by a flow of water or other liquid.
  • Specifically—2. To water, as land, by causing a stream or streams to be distributed over it. See irrigation.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To water; to wet; to moisten with running or dropping water; to bedew.
  • transitive verb (Agric.) To water, as land, by causing a stream to flow upon, over, or through it, as in artificial channels.
  • transitive verb (Med.) To rinse (a wound, infected area, etc.) with a flow or spray of a liquid.

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

  • verb To supply farmland with water, by building ditches, pipes, etc.
  • verb To clean a wound with a fluid

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

  • verb supply with a constant flow or sprinkling of some liquid, for the purpose of cooling, cleansing, or disinfecting
  • verb supply with water, as with channels or ditches or streams

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin irrigāre, irrigāt- : in-, in; see in– + rigāre, to water.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin irrigare.

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Examples

Comments

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  • “When we landed here, it seemed natural to us to direct our lander to the shore of our bay, since we thought the water we saw was potable and might be used for irrigation.” – Gene Wolfe, On Blue’s Waters

    November 5, 2009