Small swampy lake. From the Midwest.
Mud flats / marshes where a creek or river enters a large body of water. Such as the enormous number of features named “<Something> Slough” all over the South SF Bay:
A marshy, watery area, usuallly filled with tall grasses.
Got that from the Little House on the Prairie books - the Big Slough.
A very slow-moving or stagnant water conveyance. I learned this as a child from general conversation with people.
ETA: there are many sloughs and bayous in the Mississippi Delta and along the Big Black and Pearl Rivers here. The word is very common, especially among hunting and fishing folks.
Well, it’s not the only definition, but it was the first one that came to mind for me because that is what people up here commonly call drainage water that flows down after thaws or rains. Ditch water, basically.
I’ve always pronounced it to rhyme with “cow,” although I can’t honestly say I ever remember hearing the word in conversation. It means a muddy area, marsh to me.
As in the books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, the marshy area with tall grasses that people were getting lost in or horses falling on when there was snow.
I grew up in Canada, but I pretty much think of a slough/“slew” as being that. Slough “sluff” is what is shedded/debrided especially skin. Or also a slang expression for lazy. Sloughing off.
This is my prototype.
We have a slough in town, too.
A slough is a geographical feature described as a low lying area that occaisonally holds water.
I’m from south Texas, which is where I learned my definition of that word.
It depends on the context - as a verb, I pronounce it “sloff” like sloughing off the skin of a snake, but i rarely encounter it as a verb except in that context.
As a noun, I pronounce it “slew” and generally take it to mean a body of water that is larger than a creek, but not big enough to be a river. I learned it growing up near Seattle. Bellevue has the Mercer Slough near downtown, and the Sammamish Slough which connects Lake Sammamish to Lake Washington. I never heard of any tidal influences since these are both fresh water bodies.
When I see the word by itself - like in the thread title, I think of the water definition.
I think of it as a swampy creek. My grandfather (in Northern New York) had one on his farm that he called by that name.
I immediately though of it as a variation of slop: the stuff you feed pigs and similar eaters.
Apparently, I’m wrong.
I read like a fiend as a kid, watch a lot of British tv too, and I have never heard the OP’s definition. Maybe it’s fairly local.
Southern California. Maybe there just isn’t enough running water here.
That’s how the city in England is pronounced. Slough is the setting for The Office.
I think I first heard the word in a 40k novel, in the context of flamethrowers. So I definitely think of the shedding of skin first.
Pretty much the same definition, with the addition of man-made rectangular ponds also being called sloughs.
Alberta and Saskatchewan
A slough here on the prairies is a watering hole, much like a holding pond. It is a hole that catches rainwater. Ran across this in a story in my Grade 4 reader.
It can also mean an abundance of things, such as in “I have a whole slough of American change in my cookie jar.” Discovered this one at the same time from my Grade 4 teacher.
Here’s my guess before reading other’s responses…
A drainage area? Not quite a river, stream, creek, lake or pond, but an area where water travels and drains off land…
Like some others said above, I got my knowledge of sloughs from living in the Sacramento/San Francisco Bay area for a time, having lived in Virginia my whole life. I noticed these things all over the place and had never seen them before, so I remembered the name.