Meaning

• The physical confine of a river or slough, consisting of a bed and banks.

  "The water coming out of the waterwheel created a standing wave in the channel."

• The natural or man-made deeper course through a reef, bar, bay, or any shallow body of water.

  "A channel was dredged to allow ocean-going vessels to reach the city."

• The navigable part of a river.

  "We were careful to keep our boat in the channel."

• A narrow body of water between two land masses.

  "The English Channel lies between France and England."

• Something through which another thing passes; a means of conveying or transmitting.

  "The news was conveyed to us by different channels."

• A gutter; a groove, as in a fluted column.

• A connection between initiating and terminating nodes of a circuit.

  "The guard-rail provided the channel between the downed wire and the tree."

• The narrow conducting portion of a MOSFET transistor.

• (communication) The part that connects a data source to a data sink.

  "A channel stretches between them."

• (communication) A path for conveying electrical or electromagnetic signals, usually distinguished from other parallel paths.

  "We are using one of the 24 channels."

• (communication) A single path provided by a transmission medium via physical separation, such as by multipair cable.

  "The channel is created by bonding the signals from these four pairs."

• (communication) A single path provided by a transmission medium via spectral or protocol separation, such as by frequency or time-division multiplexing.

  "Their call is being carried on channel 6 of the T-1 line."

• A specific radio frequency or band of frequencies, usually in conjunction with a predetermined letter, number, or codeword, and allocated by international agreement.

  "KNDD is the channel at 107.7 MHz in Seattle."

• A specific radio frequency or band of frequencies used for transmitting television.

  "NBC is on channel 11 in San Jose."

• (storage) The portion of a storage medium, such as a track or a band, that is accessible to a given reading or writing station or head.

  "This chip in this disk drive is the channel device."

• (technic) The way in a turbine pump where the pressure is built up.

  "The liquid is pressurized in the lateral channel."

• A distribution channel

• A particular area for conversations on an IRC network, analogous to a chat room and often dedicated to a specific topic.

• An obsolete means of delivering up-to-date Internet content.

• A psychic or medium who temporarily takes on the personality of somebody else.