Word.ws English Dictionary

clough

/klʌf/

clough noun: a narrow valley; a cleft in a hillside; a ravine, glen, or gorge. Also the alternative form of cloff.

Noun

clough (plural cloughs)

  1. (Northern England, US) A narrow valley; a cleft in a hillside; a ravine, glen, or gorge.
    • The day-sky glimmered on the dew[…]
      And lurked in heath and braken clough1813, James Hogg, The Queen's Wake
    • These beds form no good escarpments southward of the clough; but they appear to be higher than the corresponding beds on the opposite side; there would thus seem to be a fault in the valley downthrowing on the west, but it is quite hidden by débris.1875, Edward Hull, John Roche Dakyns, Richard Hill Tiddeman, The Geology of the Burnley Coal-field and of the Country Around Clitheroe, Blackburn, Preston, Chorley, Haslingden, and Todmorden, page 104
  2. A sluice used in returning water to a channel after depositing its sediment on the flooded land.
    • I have, accordingly, estimated the depth of drain at the lower end to be 1 foot 6 inches deeper than the fill of the clough, and given it a progressive rise to suit with 5 feet depth below the surface at its head.1801, William Chapman, Sundry Papers and Reports, page 34
    • When the spring tide begins to ebb, the flood gate is opened to admit the tide, the clough having been previously shut by the weight of water brouht up the river by the flow of the tide. As the tide ebbs down the river, the weight or pressure of water being taken from the outside of the clough next...1808, William Humphrey Marshall, A review of the reports to the Board of agriculture - Volume 1, page 394
  3. (dialectal) The cleft or fork of a tree; crotch.
    • The same praise should not be refused to the North-countryman who talks of "the clough" of the tree, literally the valley, the cleft, where the branches part.1865 July, George Smith, William Makepeace Thackeray, “The Poetry of Provincialisms”, in The Cornhill Magazine, volume 12, page 39
  4. (dialectal) A wood; weald.

Proper noun capitalized: Clough

Clough

  1. A surname transferred from the common noun.
  2. A village and townland in County Down, Northern Ireland.
  3. A village in County Laois, Ireland.
  4. An extinct town in Meade County, South Dakota, United States.

Also used as

clough is also the alternative form of cloff.

Examples of clough in a sentence

  • The features of a clough fall well in with a Teutonic idea that Thor, their thunder-god, had smitten these places when in fits of fury and made the deep gashes in the hillsides.1902, Yorkshire Dialect Society, Transactions - Volumes 1-4, page 20:
  • The rabbit killer left his home for the clough1982, The Fall, “Jawbone and the Air-Rifle”, in Hex Enduction Hour:
  • Now we've sorted that out, the easiest way is up the clough and along the bridleway.2014, Malc Cowle, Trespassers! A Tribute to Fighters for the Freedom to Roam, page 189:
  • When the spring tide begins to ebb, the flood gate is opened to admit the tide, the clough having been previously shut by the weight of water brouht up the river by the flow of the tide.1808, William Humphrey Marshall, A review of the reports to the Board of agriculture - Volume 1, page 394:

Forms of clough

pluralcloughs
alternative Scotlandcleugh
alternative Scotlandcleuch

Origin of clough

From Middle English clough, clow, cloȝ, from Old English *clōh, from Proto-West Germanic *klą̄h (“cleft, sluice, abyss”), of uncertain origin, possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *gel- (“to form into a ball”). Cognate with Scots cleuch (“gorge; ravine”), Old High German klāh (in placenames), Old High German klingo, klinga (“brook, cataract, gulf, rapids”). Perhaps conflated or influenced by Old Norse klofi (“a cleft or rift in a hill, ravine”); compare Dutch kloof (“a slit, crevice, chink”). See also cling, clove.

* As an English surname, from the noun clough. * As a Welsh surname, from cloff (“lame”), from Late Latin cloppus, perhaps ultimately imitative of a limping person. * As an Irish place name, from Irish an Chloch, "the stone".

Words formed from clough

Words that rhyme with clough

27 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about clough

What does clough mean?
Clough means a narrow valley; a cleft in a hillside; a ravine, glen, or gorge.
How do you use clough in a sentence?
The features of a clough fall well in with a Teutonic idea that Thor, their thunder-god, had smitten these places when in fits of fury and made the deep gashes in the hillsides.
What part of speech is clough?
Clough can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce clough?
Clough is pronounced /klʌf/.
What is the plural of clough?
The plural of clough is cloughs.

Words near clough in the dictionary

  1. cloudwise
  2. cloudy
  3. cloudy wing virus
  4. cloudywing
  5. cloudywings
  6. clough
  7. Cloughaneely
  8. Cloughfold
  9. Cloughjordan
  10. Cloughoge
  11. cloughs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: clough (page history and authors); Clough (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: Clough - Canadian English (klaʊ).ogg, En-us-clough.oga.

Cite this entry: “clough.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/clough. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.