I. ˈslü, ˈslau̇ sometimes ˈsləf noun
( -s )
Etymology: Middle English slogh, from Old English slōh; akin to Middle High German slouche ditch
1.
a. : a place of deep mud or mire : mudhole
walk up steep rises in the road or help rescue horses stalled in a slough — American Guide Series: New Jersey
b. also slew or slue ˈslü
(1) : a large wet or marshy place : swamp
Indians are still living in primitive palm-thatched huts in the sloughs of the Everglades — Merrill Folsom
(2) : a small marshy place lying in a local depression of dry land (as on a prairie) ; also : a depression that becomes marshy or filled with water
thousands of sloughs and potholes went dry — I.N.Gabrielson
c. also slew or slue
(1) : a side channel or inlet (as from a river) : a sluggish channel : a small backwater : bayou , pond
lakes so close together and so intricately connected by rivers and sloughs that they may almost be called continuous — Bernard DeVoto
(2) : a creek in a marshland, tide flat, or bottomland
a narrow tidal slough , over three miles long — U.S. Board on Geographical Names Decisions
2. obsolete : mud , mire , ooze
3. : a state of moral degradation or spiritual dejection into which one sinks or from which one cannot free oneself : an engulfing depth of something (as sin or misery) : morass
one of those tireless organizers who come to the rescue of doddering lodges and … bring them out of their sloughs when all hope is gone — C.W.Ferguson
high hopes ended in such a slough of frustration, paralysis, and bitterness — W.W.Kaufmann
music has just kept her nose above the slough of realism, romance, and melodrama — Clive Bell
the sooty slough that submerges so many factory towns — American Guide Series: Vermont
a slough of self-distrust
a slough of mediocrity
II. verb
( -ed/-ing/-s )
transitive verb
1. : to engulf in or as if in a slough
2. slang : arrest , imprison — usually used with in or up
intransitive verb
: to plod through mud
lumberjacks sloughing through swampy lowlands — D.G.Hoffman
III. ˈsləf noun
( -s )
Etymology: Middle English slughe, slouh; akin to Middle High German slūch snake skin, hose, Norwegian slo fleshy part of a horn, Dutch sluiken to slip, smuggle, Lithuanian šliaũžti to glide, crawl
1. : the skin of a snake or other animal that sheds its skin ; especially : the cast-off skin
2. : a mass of dead tissue separating from an ulcer : the dead part separating from living tissues in mortification
3. : something that may be shed or cast off
when shall this slough of sense be cast — A.E.Housman
the book is … necessarily a study in sociology, concerning itself with the struggles of a new order in casting off the slough of the old — Times Literary Supplement
4. chiefly dialect
a. : an outer skin, covering, or sheath
b. : shell , husk
the slough on a fruit
5. : a mass of material that has sloughed from the side of a mine working or drill hole
6.
[so called from the fact that it involves sloughing or discard]
: a card game that is a variety of frog or solo
IV. verb
( -ed/-ing/-s )
intransitive verb
1.
a. : to become shed or cast off
a snake skin sloughs
the skin of my hand and forearm sloughed in patches — J.M.Savidge
his clothes hung in rags, and some of them had sloughed off — Edison Marshall
b. : to shed or cast off one's skin
the snake sloughs annually
c. : to become encrusted with or as if with a slough: as
(1) : to form a slough : separate in the form of dead tissue from living tissue
a sloughing ulcer
the dead tissue sloughs slowly
a sloughing of the colon
— often used with off
(2) : to cast off a thin film of scum or mass of bacterial growth or fungus
a filter used in sewage disposal sloughs
2.
a. : to crumble and fall away : fall , slide
fragments of rock slough from the sides of a mine working or drill hole
the track had disappeared with the sloughing of the surface rock — Francis Kingdon-Ward
a worn stone building with stucco sloughing from its face
stream banks that have a tendency to slough at high-water level — Carpentry
b. : to drop or fall off : diminish in significance or intensity
trade sloughs off after Christmas
3. : to slip from a bobbin or other package and tangle
yarn sloughs
— usually used with off
transitive verb
1.
a. : to cast off : throw off : ease off
slough dead tissue
many of the teeth are supported by soft tissue only; and several of them have been sloughed — E.C.Stafne
a naked tired dark man, sloughing water off his thighs — Douglas Newton
b. : to get rid of, abandon, or discard as irksome, objectionable, deleterious, disadvantageous, outworn, or excrescent
sloughed their knapsacks — H.M.Robinson
— usually used with off
sloughed off the unimportant verbiage — P.D.Leedy
the tendency in furniture … to slough off many of its former crude and ungraceful characteristics — W.R.Storey
author has sloughed off most of her more irritating sentimentalities — Times Literary Supplement
enlarged his understanding of religion by sloughing off most of the cosmological and theological lore associated with it — P.L.Holmer
2. : to consume or waste away by forming a slough — usually used with away
the ulcer sloughed away the breast
3. : to get rid of (a playing card)
Synonyms: see discard
V. ˈslü
variant of slue
VI. ˈslau̇ transitive verb
( -ed/-ing/-s )
Etymology: probably alteration (influenced by slough ) (IV) of slug (VI)
slang : to strike heavily