What does channel mean?

What does channel mean?. The world's largest and most trusted free online dictionary: definitions, synonyms, word origins, example sentences, word games, and more.

What does channel mean? - The Free Dictionary

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[n] a path over which electrical signals can pass(a channel is typically what you rent from a telephone company)[v] transmit or serve as the medium for transmission(Sound carries well over water The airwaves carry the sound Many metals conduct heat)[n] a passage for water (or other fluids)

channel

channel - The Free Dictionary

[n] a path over which electrical signals can pass
(a channel is typically what you rent from a telephone company)

[v] transmit or serve as the medium for transmission
(Sound carries well over water The airwaves carry the sound Many metals conduct heat)

[n] a passage for water (or other fluids) to flow through
(the fields were crossed with irrigation channels gutters carried off the rainwater into a series of channels under the street)

[v] direct the flow of
(channel information towards a broad audience)

[n] a long narrow furrow cut either by a natural process (such as erosion) or by a tool (as e.g. a groove in a phonograph record)

[v] send from one person or place to another
(transmit a message)

[n] a deep and relatively narrow body of water (as in a river or a harbor or a strait linking two larger bodies) that allows the best passage for vessels
(the ship went aground in the channel)

[n] (often plural) a means of communication or access
(it must go through official channels lines of communication were set up between the two firms)

[n] a bodily passage or tube lined with epithelial cells and conveying a secretion or other substance
(the tear duct was obstructed the alimentary canal poison is released through a channel in the snake's fangs)

[n] a television station and its programs
(a satellite TV channel surfing through the channels they offer more than one hundred channels)

[n] a way of selling a company's product either directly or via distributors
(possible distribution channels are wholesalers or small retailers or retail chains or direct mailers or your own stores)

Other vocabulary

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Dictionary

A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically (or by consonantal root for Semitic languages or radical and stroke for ideographic languages), which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies, pronunciations, translation, etc. It is a lexicographical reference that shows inter-relationships among the data.

A broad distinction is made between general and specialized dictionaries. Specialized dictionaries include words in specialist fields, rather than a complete range of words in the language. Lexical items that describe concepts in specific fields are usually called terms instead of words, although there is no consensus whether lexicology and terminology are two different fields of study. In theory, general dictionaries are supposed[citation needed] to be semasiological, mapping word to definition, while specialized dictionaries are supposed to be onomasiological, first identifying concepts and then establishing the terms used to designate them. In practice, the two approaches are used for both types. There are other types of dictionaries that do not fit neatly into the above distinction, for instance bilingual (translation) dictionaries, dictionaries of synonyms (thesauri), and rhyming dictionaries. The word dictionary (unqualified) is usually understood to refer to a general purpose monolingual dictionary.

There is also a contrast between prescriptive or descriptive dictionaries; the former reflect what is seen as correct use of the language while the latter reflect recorded actual use. Stylistic indications (e.g. "informal" or "vulgar") in many modern dictionaries are also considered by some to be less than objectively descriptive.

The first recorded dictionaries date back to Sumerian times around 2300 BCE, in the form of bilingual dictionaries, and the oldest surviving monolingual dictionaries are Chinese dictionaries c. 3rd century BCE. The first purely English alphabetical dictionary was A Table Alphabeticall, written in 1604, and monolingual dictionaries in other languages also began appearing in Europe at around this time. The systematic study of dictionaries as objects of scientific interest arose as a 20th-century enterprise, called lexicography, and largely initiated by Ladislav Zgusta. The birth of the new discipline was not without controversy, with the practical dictionary-makers being sometimes accused by others of having an "astonishing" lack of method and critical-self reflection.