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canal

13 ENTRIES FOUND:
  1. canal (noun)
  2. Canal Zone
  3. Canaletto (biographical name)
  4. Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park (geographical name)
  5. alimentary canal (noun)
  6. anal canal
  7. Erie Canal
  8. Grand Canal
  9. Love Canal
  10. Lynn Canal
  11. Panama Canal
  12. Suez Canal
  13. Trent Canal

canal

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Canal with a basic lock arrangement. Boats traveling upstream pass from the lower to the upper pool …—© Merriam-Webster Inc.

Artificial waterway built for transportation, irrigation, water supply, or drainage. The early Middle Eastern civilizations probably first built canals to supply drinking and irrigation water. The most ambitious navigation canal was a 200-mi (320-km) construction in what is now Iraq. Roman canal systems for military transport extended throughout northern Europe and Britain. The most significant canal innovation was the pound lock, developed by the Dutch c. 1373. The closed chamber, or pound, of a lock is flooded or drained of water so that a vessel within it is raised or lowered in order to pass between bodies of water at different elevations. Canals were extremely important before the coming of the railroad in the mid-19th century. Among the significant waterways in the U.S. were the Erie Canal, several canals linking the Great Lakes, and one connecting the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River. Modern waterway engineering enables larger vessels to travel faster by reducing delays at locks. See also Grand Canal, Panama Canal, Suez Canal.

This entry comes from Encyclopædia Britannica Concise.
For the full entry on canal, visit Britannica.com.

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