To me it means to fall off in the manner of well stewed meat from the bone. I’ve seen it in reference to injuries to people and illnesses.
To be clear, that’s the sluff pronunciation I don’t know that I’ve heard it pronounced “slew.”
Pronounced “sluff” it would mean exfoliating or shedding. Pronounced “Sloww” it’s a town in England.
Pronounced “slew”? Never heard of it.
ETA: I just realized I’ve heard of a body of water in Iowa called Dan Green Slough, but I never would have guessed it was pronounced slew.
British.
Slough (“slew”): A stagnant pond. And if you’ve ever been to Slough (ryhmes with plough), England, that sounds entirely appropriate.
Slough was the setting for the British original of The Office.
OK.
To me a slough is a small, slow river that flows through marshland, especially in a tidal zone.
I’m from L.A. and first heard the word there as an explanation of the name of the racehorse Seattle Slew. Now I live in Northwest Washington.
With that pronunciation, a marshy channel affected by tides. There are a lot around here, the San Francisco Bay region. I used to live next to Belmont Slough. Then there’s Elkhorn Slough on Monterey Bay.
Marshy/swampy/wetland area. Like this.
Learned it growing up in Minnesota.
Before reading through the thread, just an off-the-cuff response to the OP:
I never have heard of of a word “slough” pronounced to rhyme with “flew”. I am only familiar with the following:
a) “slough” rhyming with “tough”, and meaning “to shed, or to scour away”. Often combined with “off” (e.g. sloughing off dead skin with a loofah).
b) “slew” rhyming with “flew”, and meaning “a lot, a bunch”. Use in a sentence: He was an hour late, and offered up a slew of excuses – overslept, flat tire, took a wrong turn, and so on.
Without reading:
pronouced “slew” a rough mixture of water and various food stuffs givent o pigs and such. Or any mixture that is liquidy and not dissolving or even in suspension
pronounced “sluff” to rub or scrub off - used mostly to describe the use of a loofah or other exfoliation device.
After looking it up, I think definition one must be a local corruption of “slurry.” Was very common among the farmers in my Mother’s home town (South Georgia).
Tallahassee, FL. Answering before I read the others. I would use it to mean an area with standing water that’s runoff from a river or other large body of water. Might have creeks going in or out of it.
In other words, exactly what the other Tallahasseean said.
I believe that one is actually spelled slew.
Main Entry: 4slew
Function: noun
Etymology: perhaps from Irish slua army, host, throng, from Old Irish slúag; akin to Lithuanian slaugyti to tend
Date: 1839
: a large number <a slew of books>
I thought it just meant “swamp”. The word was not used where I grew up (Rhode Island); I learned it from Dr. Livesey’s speech in Treasure Island ("… and not having sense enough to know honest air from poison, and the dry land from a vile, pestiferous slough"), which, interestingly, seems to be the main quote used to illustrate the term when I Google it.
Marshy grassy area.
Slough:
A wet spot in a field of corn of corn or beans for which the farmer paid darn good money to eradicate whereupon the DNR boys came along and made him restore. Midwest USA definition.
My first response, without reading any other: a small pond. And I learned it only about a dozen years ago, from my daughter-in-law who grew up east of LA.
Down here near the everglades, a slough is a seasonal body of water. Specifically, a wide, shallow “river” that is (mostly) dry in winter. In my county I can think of Six Mile Cypress Slough, Gator Slough, Stewart Cypress Slough and Cow Slough to name a few.
Aerial image of a slough. It is the long, dark green streak running roughly NE-SW.
a whole bunch of stuff
A marshy area. I have no idea whether this is correct or not, I just keep thinking of the term “slough of despond” and assuming it’s some place where it would be very hard to walk without your feet getting stuck.
And I was probably 40 years old before I knew of the pronunciation “slew”. I mentally pronounced it “sloff”.
::::checks username, determines it’s not me::::
Huh - same source (I forgot to put that in my earlier posting), and same interpretation. Funny!
Missed the edit window-
I typed a response as fast as I could without reading any responses…
Pronounced ‘sluff’ I would call it the snake skin shedding…
I wouldn’t ever think of a body of water or wetlands in a million years.
Grew up in rural Iowa.
As a noun: a bog or swamp, or possibly something discarded as worthless, such as dead skin.
As a verb: to shed something unwanted and useless, such as dead skin.