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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

canal.

An artificial waterway or artificially improved river used for travel, shipping, or irrigation.

5 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/kəˈnæl/Australia, Canada, General-American, Received-Pronunciation/kəˈnal/British, Northern-England, Scotland, Southern, Standard, Wales/kəˈnɛl/New-Zealand/kəˈnɛl/Canada, also
  1. An artificial waterway or artificially improved river used for travel, shipping, or irrigation.

  2. A tubular channel within the body or within a plant.

  3. One of the faint, hazy markings resembling straight lines on early telescopic images of the surface of Mars; see Martian canals

Where this word comes from

Borrowed from Middle French canal, from Old French canal, from Latin canālis (“channel, canal, narrow passage”), from canna (“reed, cane”), from Ancient Greek κάννα (kánna, “reed”), from Akkadian 𒄀 (qanû, “reed”). Doublet of channel. See also cane and -al.

verb/kəˈnæl/Australia, Canada, General-American, Received-Pronunciation/kəˈnal/British, Northern-England, Scotland, Southern, Standard, Wales/kəˈnɛl/New-Zealand/kəˈnɛl/Canada, also
  1. To dig an artificial waterway in or to (a place), especially for drainage

  2. To travel along a canal by boat

Where this word comes from

Borrowed from Middle French canal, from Old French canal, from Latin canālis (“channel, canal, narrow passage”), from canna (“reed, cane”), from Ancient Greek κάννα (kánna, “reed”), from Akkadian 𒄀 (qanû, “reed”). Doublet of channel. See also cane and -al.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.