Channel

How to spell channel

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce channel

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does channel mean?

1. nounA passage, route, or medium along which water, signals, or information travels.
2. verbTo direct or convey something along a particular route or toward a particular purpose.

Channel in a sentence

• noun

  The documentary aired on a public television channel last night.

• verb

  The charity will channel every donation straight into local schools.

• noun

  A deep shipping channel runs between the two harbours.

• verb

  Engineers built sluices to channel floodwater away from the town.

Where does channel come from?

Language of origin: French

The word travelled into English from the Old French chanel, which itself came from the Latin canalis, meaning a pipe, groove, or water conduit. That Latin word was built on canna, meaning 'reed' or 'cane', because a hollow reed naturally suggests a tube through which something can flow. English borrowed it in the 1300s, first for a bed of running water or a stretch of sea, and the sense gradually widened to cover any route along which something moves, whether water, sound, or information. The very same canalis root also gives us 'canal', so channel and canal are essentially the same ancient word arriving by slightly different paths. The doubled 'n' and the soft '-nel' ending are the spelling traps, since the word sounds as though it might end in '-al' like its cousin 'canal'.

How the word is built

• chan- (from Latin canna: reed, pipe)
• -nel (diminutive ending forming 'little pipe')