Channeled

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Led or directed along a specific route or channel ; sent or transmitted from one place or person to another ; received or communicated from a supernatural source by a medium
2. Guided through a physical or figurative channel ; conveyed or passed on through a specified means ; spiritually communicated by someone acting as a psychic intermediary
3. Moved or guided through a defined passage ; transferred or broadcast from an origin to a destination ; inspired or dictated by paranormal or psychic forces

Etymology: The verb "channeled" traces back to a Latin word for a water-course. Latin "canalis" meant "groove, canal, channel", and it passed into Old French as "chanel" or "canel", then into Middle English as "chanel" and its variants "canel", "cannel" and "kanel". English thus took the noun first, in the sense of a bed for flowing water, and only later turned it into a verb meaning to cut grooves or direct a flow along a course. "Canal" and "channel" are doublets: two words from the same Latin source that entered English by different routes, one directly from Latin and one through French. The verb's sense of guiding something through a defined passage follows naturally from that watery origin. To channel money, goods or messages is to send them along a set route, and the same logic lies behind broadcasting a signal from a source to a receiver. The paranormal sense, where a medium is said to channel a spirit, is a later extension of the same image: the person becomes the passage through which a message from elsewhere is directed.

Synonyms: directed, guided

Antonyms: misdirected, scattered