slough

plural sloughs · alternative sluff

1. countableuncountableThe skin shed by a snake or other reptile.

   That is the slough of a rattler; we must be careful.

   1 more example

   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, and sent her light laugh ringing through the air like chimes of silver bells.

   1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC

2. countableuncountableDead skin on a sore or ulcer.

   This is the slough that came off of his skin after the burn.

present singular third person sloughs · participle present sloughing · participle past sloughed · past sloughed · alternative sluff

1. transitiveTo shed skin or outer layers.

   This skin is being sloughed.

   2 more examples

   Snakes slough their skin periodically.

   When Harper came back into the infirmary of the Hyperion, Alec was laboriously trying to pull on his pants. His burned skin had healed over the intervening day, the damaged layer sloughed off and quickly replaced thanks to SAM’s efforts, but the buildup of waste products in Alec’s body from the accelerated healing had left him with sore muscles and achy joints.

   2017 November, N. K. Jemisin, Mac Walters, chapter 16, in Mass Effect Andromeda: Initiation, 1st edition (Science Fiction), Titan Books, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 293

2. intransitiveTo 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.

   3 more examples

   The mud sloughed off her palms easily […]

   2013, Casey Watson, Mummy’s Little Helper: The heartrending true story of a young girl

   1944 United States. Bureau of Mines · War Minerals Report 386. Google books The adit penetrated the vug ... and at this level ... it was filled with material that had ... sloughed off the walls.

   An avalanche sloughing off a Utah mountainside killed a state Department of Transportation avalanche forecaster while he was surveying snow levels near a popular winter recreation area, authorities reported.

   2013 April 13, Michael Mello, “Avalanche forecaster killed in Utah avalanche”, in Los Angeles Times

3. transitivecard gamesTo discard.

   East sloughed a heart.

4. USWesternintransitiveslangTo commit truancy, be absent from school without permission.

   Synonyms: ditch

plural sloughs · alternative slue · alternative slew

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

   1 more example

   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 often revert to the subject, and to her pretensions, and the hardship of her lot: and my curiosity and questions giving a fillip to her memory, scarcely a day passed but she recovered some new detail from the past; as at one time a service of gold-plate which she perfectly remembered she had seen on her father's sideboard; and at another time an accident that had befell her in her childhood, through her father's coach and six horses being overturned in a slough.

   1897, Stanley John Weyman, chapter IV, in Shrewsbury

2. Northern USSouthern USA 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.

   1 more example

   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. USWesternA 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 PrairiesA 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.

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.