washway

From wash +‎ way.

washway (plural washways)

1. A channel where water flows during floods, especially one that is carved out by erosion caused by floodwater.
   • 1811, Richard Parkinson, General view of the agriculture of the County of Huntingdon, Great Britain: Board of Agriculture, page 341:

     […] justifies a conclusion, that by the farther contraction of the descending waters over the washway, the navigation and drainage through the Wisbeach river, will be farther improved.

   • 1882, James Sandby Padley, The fens and floods of mid-Lincolnshire, page 14:

     […] these frontagers were obliged to leave a washway of half-a-mile wide on the west side of the river, so as not to impede the drainage of the country; […]

   • 1993, Bernard J. Nebel, Richard T. Wright, Environmental Science: The Way the World Works, page 260:

     Gradually, a narrow, tree-lined stream may be converted into a broad washway of drifts of sand and gravel.

   • 2013, Edmund Elsner, Gravity My Enemy, page 383:

     At the edge of the washway on our left it shot out several feet into the air before falling to the jumble of boulders below.

2. A sluice where manure and other agricultural waste is washed away.
   • 1966, California Feeder's Day, page 65:

     The steers in this treatment had space for standing only in the washways, whereas the steers in all the other treatments had additional standing or lying space other than the washways.

   • 1967, The Farm Quarterly - Volume 22, page 141:

     Another test attack on the winter mud and manure problem is the installation of two four-hundred-foot washways immediately behind the feed bunks.

   • 1968, California Agriculture - Volume 22, page 6:

     The four pens included a 9-ft-wide manure washway which ran the length of the feed bunk and was flushed daily.

3. A portion of a device where something is washed.
   • 1962, Milton L. Obitts, “Wash Kit for Contact Lenses and the Like”, in Official Gazette of the United States Patent Office, page 388:

     […] said deformable means having lens contacting opposed surfaces providing a washway and adapted for wiping engagement with a lens moved longitudinally in the washway.

   • 1966, The Canadian Patent Office Record, page 7714:

     {{..}}. such washing means comprising opposed confronting contacting elements defining the locus of an elongated washway aligned with the opening in said other neck, the body member and said other neck being formed with interfitting threads for facile removal and replacement of the scrubber assembly as a unit from and onto said other neck, […]

4. A means of washing.
   • 1917, “Compare These Two Washways”, in Good Housekeeping, volume 65, page 159:

     You'll probably admit that a good washing machine is better than the old time washway.

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