SLOUGH • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Slough

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noun

Slough n.

A place of deep mud or mire; a hole full of mire. "He's here stuck in a slough."

A wet place; a swale; a side channel or inlet from a river. Note: (In this sense local or provincial; also spelt sloo, and slue.)

Slough grass (Bot.), a name in the Mississippi valley for grasses of the genus Muhlenbergia; called also drop seed, and nimble Will.

Slough n.

The skin, commonly the cast-off skin, of a serpent or of some similar animal.

(Med.) The dead mass separating from a foul sore; the dead part which separates from the living tissue in mortification.

verb

Slough v. t. To cast off; to discard as refuse. "New tint the plumage of the birds, And slough decay from grazing herds."

Slough v. i. (past & past part. sloughed; pres. part. sloughing) (Med.) To form a slough; to separate in the form of dead matter from the living tissues; often used with off, or away; as, a sloughing ulcer; the dead tissues slough off slowly.

Slough v. obs. Imp. of Slee, to slay. Slew.

adjective

Slough adj. Slow. (Obs.)

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Etymology of 'Slough'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Slough" Quotes from Famous Books

... bodies bent double (the Germans were only two hundred yards on the other side of the parapet) walked on dry earth for at least ten paces. The officer's laughter was loud at the corner of the next traverse, when there was an abrupt descent into a slough of despond. ...

— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... lies old Hobson. Death hath broke his girt, And here, alas, hath laid him in the dirt; Or else, the ways being foul, twenty to one He's here stuck in a slough, and overthrown. 'Twas such a shifter that, if truth were known, Death was half glad when he had got him down; For he had any time this ten years full Dodged with him betwixt Cambridge and The Bull, And surely Death could never have prevailed Had not his weekly course of carriage failed: ...

— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... I have described my Pilgrim's Progress from the Slough of Despond, commonly known as Section Sanitaire Vingt-et-Un (then located at Germaine) through the mysteries of Noyon, Gre and Paris to the Porte de Triage de La Ferte Mace, Orne. With the end of my first day as a certified inhabitant of the latter institution a definite progression is brought to ...

— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... practicability of social reform, but it must be through individual effort. Years ago he decided that society was in a low state, now he calls on all men to put their shoulders to the wheel and lift it out of the Slough of Despond, where it has been floundering to no purpose for so long. His investigations are aided by a keen shrewdness, that bespeaks the practical man, who knows where to find the vulnerable heel of circumstance, ...

— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... man had not yet lost all that part of his soul which longs for beauty: nay we cannot but hope that it is not yet dying. If we are not deceived in that hope, if the art of to-day has really come alive out of the slough of despond which we call the eighteenth century, it will surely grow and gather strength and draw to it other forms of intellect and hope that now scarcely know it; and then, whatever changes it may go through, it will at the last be victorious, and bring abundant content to mankind. ...

— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris

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