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Definition of "runnel" [run•nel]

  • A rivulet; a brook. (noun)
  • A narrow channel or course, as for water. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "runnel" in a sentence
  • "Woolf was one of those authors whose "paper rivers" formed the origin of Laing's watery obsessions, and there's an intriguing correspondence between "sources": rooting in "a copse of hazel and stunted oak" to find the indefinite "clammy runnel" of the Ouse, and shuffling among original manuscripts in a bone-dry archive."
  • "I moved to his side, my finger tracing one runnel of sweat down his chest."
  • "The “river” itself was more like a sludge channel, and trees hugged at its banks, choking it at impossible angles on either side, looking vaguely as though two armies were facing off with spindly and florid pikes, unsure who would make the first move over the brown, oily runnel between them."