slough

Noun (1)

slough (countable and uncountable, plural sloughs)

1. The skin shed by a snake or other reptile.
   • That is the slough of a rattler; we must be careful.
   • And without more ado she stood up and shook the white wrappings from her, and came forth shining and splendid like some glittering snake when she has cast her slough; ay, and fixed her wonderful eyes upon me - more deadly than any Basilisk's - and pierced me through and through with their beauty...1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC
2. Dead skin on a sore or ulcer.
   • This is the slough that came off of his skin after the burn.

Verb

slough (third-person singular simple present sloughs, present participle sloughing, simple past and past participle sloughed)

1. (transitive) To shed skin or outer layers.
   • This skin is being sloughed.
   • Snakes slough their skin periodically.
2. (intransitive) To slide off or flake off, as an outer layer, such as skin, might do.
   • A week after he was burned, a layer of skin on his arm sloughed off.
   • The mud sloughed off her palms easily […]2013, Casey Watson, Mummy’s Little Helper: The heartrending true story of a young girl
3. (transitive) To discard.
   • East sloughed a heart.
4. (US, Western, intransitive, slang) To commit truancy, be absent from school without permission.

   Synonyms:

   ditch

Noun (2)

IPA/slaʊ/US/slaʊ/

slough (plural sloughs)

1. A marshy or muddy area.
   • "That comed - as you call it - of being arrant asses," retorted the doctor, "and not having sense enough to know honest air from poison, and the dry land from a vile, pestiferous slough.1881–1882, Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island, London; Paris: Cassell & Company, published 14 November 1883, →OCLC
   • Notwithstanding this discrepancy, however, and though, taught by experience, I hastened to agree with her that the secret of her birth was not likely to be discovered in a moment, nor by so simple a process as the journey to Norwich, which I had been going to suggest, it was natural that we should...1897, Stanley John Weyman, chapter IV, in Shrewsbury
2. (Northern-US, Southern US) A type of swamp or shallow lake system, typically formed as or by the backwater of a larger waterway, similar to a bayou with trees.
   • We paddled under a canopy of trees through the slough.
   • At that time I had no staff officer who could be trusted with that duty. In the woods, at a short distance below the clearing, I found a depression, dry at the time, but which at high water became a slough or bayou.1886, Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, volume 2
3. (US, Western) A secondary channel of a river delta, usually flushed by the tide.
   • The Sacramento River Delta contains dozens of sloughs that are often used for water-skiing and fishing.
4. A state of depression.
   • John is in a slough.
5. (Canadian-Prairies) A small pond, often alkaline, many but not all formed by glacial potholes.
   • Potholes or sloughs formed by a glacier’s retreat from the central plains of North America, are now known to be some of the world’s most productive ecosystems.

Proper noun capitalized: Slough

IPA/slaʊ/

Slough

1. A town in east Berkshire, England (formerly Buckinghamshire), close to Heathrow Airport.
2. A unitary authority and borough of Berkshire, the Slough Borough Council.