canals

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of canal.

   Engineers dredged the silted canals before the shipping season began.

   A network of irrigation canals fans out across the valley floor.

   Note

   One spelling serves every kind of canal: waterways cut for shipping and irrigation, the tubular channels of anatomy and botany, and the faint straight markings that early telescopes seemed to show on Mars. That last meaning has its own phrase, Martian canals, which names the markings as a set. The same letters also spell the verb's present-tense form, where the word means digging channels or traveling along them by boat.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of canal.

   The company canals the wetland so that engineers can drain it for development.

   Whenever the river floods, the district canals the overflow toward the reservoir.

   Note

   Two constructions share this form. With an object, it means cutting channels into land, usually to drain it: the company canals the wetland. Without an object, it means traveling by boat along a canal, as when someone canals through the summer. The object tells them apart. Land that is canaled is being dug, while a person who canals is simply out on the water.

   She canals from one market town to the next every summer.

   He canals whenever he can take a week off work.

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