Other forms: channels, channeled, channeling, channelled
A channel is one numbered stream of television or radio programmes. Change the channel, a music channel, what channel is it on?
The word also means a stretch of water between two land masses — the English Channel — and a passage cut for water to run along. From those comes the figurative sense of a route for something to pass through: a channel of communication, through official channels, which is standard in formal writing. And to channel something is to direct it: channel the money into repairs, channel your energy, or to channel a person is to imitate their style deliberately.
1nounchannelA television or radio station.
“There are four hundred channels and nothing on.”
2nounnarrowA narrow stretch of water between two land masses.
“The Channel is about twenty miles across at the narrowest.”
3nounpassesA route through which something passes.
“It has to go through the proper channels.”
4verbdirectTo direct something along a particular route.
“The money was channelled into repairs.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
channel is a route or passage.
Latin canalis meant a groove or a pipe, from canna, a reed — the same root as canal and cane. Every English sense is a groove for something to run along, whether the something is water, a signal or a request.
Latin
canālis — groove; canal; channel
Old French
chanel
Middle English
chanel
English, today
channel
From Middle English chanel (also as canel, cannel, kanel), a borrowing from Old French chanel, canel, from Latin canālis (“groove; canal; channel”). Doublet of canal.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA