slough of despond

Noun

slough of despond (plural sloughs of despond)

1. A dreary bog or marsh.
   • The road is winding, and consists of a succession of short, steep descents, diversified by occasional sloughs, which might well be called "sloughs of despond," into one of which Manuel was thrown rather unceremoniously, by the bursting of his saddle-girths at the top of one of these short hills, by...1834, Adrian R[ussell] Terry, Travels in the Equatorial Regions of South America, in 1832, Hartford, Conn.: Cooke & Co., →OCLC, pages 245–246
   • The road was scarcely passable; there were no longer cheerful farms and clearings, but the dark pine forest, and the rank swamp, crossed by those terrific corduroy paths (my bones ache at the mere recollection!) and deep holes and pools of rotted vegetable matter, mixed with water, black...1838, Anna Brownell Jameson, Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada, London: Saunders and Otley, OCLC 471086385; republished in Sketches in Canada, and Rambles among the Red Men, new edition...
2. (figuratively) A state of disheartening hopelessness; pit of despair.
   • Amy laughed too, and, kissing her mother, said, 'Well, I never had such a "Day of Misfortunes" as Rosamund's. I think it is because I have got such a dear darling mother that she helps me out of my troubles, my "Sloughs of Despond," as Clara calls them, quicker.' / 'The best thing is to try not to...1870, Mrs. George Tylee, “Amy's Home”, in Amy's Wish, and What Came of It: A Fairy Tale, London: Griffith and Farran, successors to Newbery and Harris, corner of St. Paul's Churchyard, →OCLC, page 6
   • Thus the colony - for owing to its enormous area the Territory can claim to be considered something more than a settlement - was at last attracting notice, and rising from the Slough of Despond into which different causes had placed it.1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 263