Leat

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An open artificial channel or conduit that directs water to power a mill or other structure
2. A constructed water channel, often with sloped banks, that conveys water to supply a mill
3. A ditch or watercourse built to carry flowing water to a mill for mechanical power

Etymology: A "leat" is a artificial watercourse, a channel cut to carry water to a mill or to another point along a river. The word's oldest form in English, Old English "ġelǣte", meant "a going out, an ending, a meeting", and it is built on the same root as the verb "let" in its older sense of letting something go or out. Pairing that with "wæterġelǣt", a compound meaning "watercourse" or "aqueduct", shows how the idea of an outlet for water became the idea of a channel. Over time the word came to mean a junction of roads, perhaps because a meeting point is where paths go out and join, and the same sense of a meeting or outlet also gave a conduit. Its German cousins follow a similar path: "Gelaß" now means a back room or private chamber, and the Old High German "gilāz" covered outlets, exits and road junctions. The English sense that survived is the narrow, water-carrying one, which mill-workers and millers in the north of England and Scotland continued to use.

Synonyms: channel, conduit, race