canal

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

• noun An artificial waterway or artificially improved river used for travel, shipping, or irrigation.
• noun Anatomy A tube, duct, or passageway.
• noun Astronomy One of the faint, hazy markings resembling straight lines on early telescopic images of the surface of Mars.
• transitive verb To dig an artificial waterway through.
• transitive verb To provide with an artificial waterway or waterways.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun A long, narrow arm of the sea penetrating far inland: as, Lynn canal, Portland canal, etc.
• noun The juice-canals or ultimate radicals of the lymph-vessels.
• noun In sponges, all of the cavities of the body, taken collectively, traversed by the currents of water which nourish the sponge from the time they enter at the pores until they pass out at the osculum.
• noun A channel which passes through the series of hemal arches beneath the backbone of a fish.
• noun In sponges, one of the canals which are continuous with the paragastric cavity, as distinguished from an incurrent canal.
• noun In ctenophorans, a branch of the perradial canal extending into the base of the corresponding tentacle.
• To intersect or cut with canals.
• noun Same as canaille, 2.
• noun An artificial waterway for irrigation or navigation.
• noun In architecture, a channel; a groove; a flute: thus, the canal of the volute is the channel on the face of the circumvolutions inclosed by a list in the Ionic capital.
• noun In anatomy, a duet; a channel through which a fluid is conveyed or solids pass; a tubular cavity in a part, or a communication between parts. See duet.
• noun In zoology, the name of sundry grooves, furrows, apertures, etc., as: the channels of various actinozoans;
• noun the afferent and efferent pores of sponges;
• noun the groove observed in different parts of certain univalve shells, and adapted for the protrusion of the long cylindrical siphon or breathing-tube possessed by those animals.
• noun In botany, an elongated intercellular or intrafascicular space, either empty or containing sap, resin, or other substances.
• noun Inferior, the inferior dental canal
• noun Median, the canal in the superior maxillary bone containing the middle superior dental nerve
• noun Posterior, the canal in the superior maxillary bone containing the posterior superior dental nerve.
• noun The canalis incisivus on either side.
• noun The canales incisivi with the anterior palatine canal in sense a.
• noun The primitive common and continuous cavity of the brain and spinal cord, not infrequently more or less extensively obliterated in the latter, but in the former modified in the form of the several ventricles and other cavities.
• noun Inferior, the channel in the inferior maxillary or lower jaw-bone, which transmits the inferior dental nerves and vessels
• noun Posterior, one or more fine canals entering the superior maxillary bone about the middle of its posterior surface, and transmitting the posterior dental vessels and nerves.
• noun One of the canaliculi lacrymales (which see, under canaliculus).
• noun In echinoderms, a canal of which a part of the wall is formed by the ambulacral nerve and its connections; the track or trace of the ambulacral nerve and its connections.

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

• noun An artificial channel filled with water and designed for navigation, or for irrigating land, etc.
• noun (Anat.) A tube or duct.
• noun Alaska A long and relatively narrow arm of the sea, approximately uniform in width; -- used chiefly in proper names.
• noun a boat for use on a canal; esp. one of peculiar shape, carrying freight, and drawn by horses walking on the towpath beside the canal.
• noun See Lock.

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

• noun An artificial waterway, often connecting one body of water with another
• noun A tubular channel within the body.
• verb To dig an artificial waterway in or to (a place), especially for drainage
• verb To travel along a canal by boat

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

• noun (astronomy) an indistinct surface feature of Mars once thought to be a system of channels; they are now believed to be an optical illusion
• noun long and narrow strip of water made for boats or for irrigation
• noun a bodily passage or tube lined with epithelial cells and conveying a secretion or other substance
• verb provide (a city) with a canal