chute

noun

1. A framework, trough, or tube, upon or through which objects are made to slide from a higher to a lower level, or through which water passes to a wheel.

   “On reaching the slip, the barrow was wheeled off the truck onto a scaffolding gantry built out over the wall, and the concrete tipped down a corrugated iron chute on to a steel plate.”

2. A waterfall or rapid.
3. A pen or passageway to constrain the movement of an animal, such as livestock being loaded for transport; the pen in which an animal is confined before being released in a rodeo.
4. An extension to a straightway on either the home stretch or the backstretch, to avoid having a turn at the start of the race.
5. (informal)A parachute.

   “Yet the initial IMF rescue plan was far from the parachute which it professed to be – the chute did open briefly but only for it to "Roman candle", the hapless victim left to plummet to earth with a sickening thud.”

   “At first, Cyclops's chute began to Roman candle , but in another moment, it popped.”

   “On the second operation the 1,000 mortar bombs were parachuted into the LZ on 125 chutes; all were on target but two roman candled which sent everyone diving for cover and necessitated the change of some knickers.”

6. (broadly, slang)A spinnaker.

verb

1. (informal, intransitive)To parachute.

name

1. (countable, uncountable)A surname.
2. (countable, uncountable)A locality in the Shire of Pyrenees, Victoria, Australia.
3. (countable, uncountable)A civil parish in eastern Wiltshire, England, which includes the settlements listed below.