The term slough (in the UK, pronounced to rhyme with cow; In the US, pronounced "slew") has several meanings related to wetland or aquatic features that seem to derive from local experience. For example:

Descriptive meanings

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• In the UK, a slough is a muddy or marshy area (for example see the probable derivation of Slough in Berkshire and other place names called Slough).
• In eastern and southeastern United States, a slough is a type of swamp or shallow lake system, typically formed as or by the backwater of a larger waterway. It is similar to a bayou with trees being present (that is, a swamp), and unlike a bog or marsh that lacks trees.
• In the western U.S., a slough is a secondary channel of a river delta or a narrow channel in a shallow salt-water marsh, usually flushed by the tide. While this is in essence the same application of the term as used in the eastern U.S., a singular difference is that there exist no native trees in the west that would grow out into the waterway to form a swamp.
• In the northern Great Plains of the U.S. and Canada, a slough is a pond (often alkaline) usually the result of glaciation (see kettle (geology)); also called a pothole, whence prairie pothole region to describe the area where these sloughs are abundant. to differentiate from following

Word definitions

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Slough has almost exclusively negative or disparaging connotations that are innapropriate to increasingly-recognized value of natural areas. The roots and older meanings of the word remain as connotations today. In the U.S., surviving "slough (wetland)" is also often a natural area.(1) Cf. such as Ebbey Slough, Snohomish County, Washington (a true western slough); University Slough, Seattle, Washington (the name is in use though named in the eastern and southeastern sense), Wikipedia redirects to Union Bay Natural Area; and around San Francisco Bay, California.
(2) See also Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB; England, Wales and Northern Ireland) or National Scenic Area (Scotland). In the U.S., Natural Area criteria are more toward environmental value and level of human disturbance. Choice of words influences whether such lands should be abandoned to development for better economic use or preserved for other values, matters of intense controversy and high stakes in the U.S. and elsewhere.Reisner GCIDE Dictionary meanings of the word are:

1. The skin, commonly the cast-off skin, of a serpent or of some similar animal.
2. (Med.) The dead mass separating from a foul sore; the dead part which separates from the living tissue in mortification.Dyck

1. A place of deep mud or mire; a hole full of mire. —Chaucer.
2. A wet place; a swale; a side channel or inlet from a river.

1. necrotic tissue; a mortified or gangrenous part or mass {gangrene}, {sphacelus}
2. a hollow filled with mud
3. a stagnant swamp (especially as part of a bayou)
4. any outer covering that can be shed or cast off (such as the cast-off skin of a snake)Miller

Thesaurus words for "slough":
abandon, baygall, bilge, bilgewater, bind, bog, bottom, bottomland, bottoms, buffalo wallow, caries, carrion, case, cashier, cast, cast aside, cast away, cast off, chuck, chuckhole, clutch, complication, crunch, decay, decomposition, deep-six, desquamation, discard, dishwater, dispose of, ditch, ditchwater, dry gangrene, dry rot, dump, eighty-six, eliminate, embarrassing position, embarrassment, everglade, exuviae, exuviate, fen, fenland, fine how-do-you-do, foulness, gangrene, garbage, gas gangrene, get quit of, get rid of, get shut of, give away, glade, hell to pay, hobble, hog wallow, holm, hot water, how-do-you-do, husk, imbroglio, jam, jettison, jilt, junk, loblolly, marais, marish, marsh, marshland, meadow, mere, mess, mire, mix, moist gangrene, molt, moor, moorland, morass, mortification, moss, muckhole, mud, mud flat, mud puddle, mudhole, necrosis, necrotic tissue, noma, offal, offscourings, parlous straits, part with, pass, peat bog, pickle, pinch, plight, pod, predicament, pretty pass, pretty pickle, pretty predicament, puddle, putrefaction, putrescence, putridity, putridness, quagmire, quicksand, rancidity, rancidness, rankness, refuse, reject, remove, riffraff, rot, rottenness, salt marsh, scrap, scrape, scum, scurf, sewage, sewerage, shed, shell, shuck, skin, slip, slob land, slop, slops, sough, sphacelation, sphacelus, spoilage, spot, squeeze, stew, sticky wicket, strait, straits, sump, swale, swamp, swampland, swill, taiga, throw away, throw off, throw out, throw over, throw overboard, tight spot, tight squeeze, tightrope, tooth decay, toss overboard, tricky spot, unholy mess, wallow, washWard

In literature

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• A deep bog, Slough of Despond, in The Pilgrim's Progress, Paul Bunyan.

Notes and references

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Bibliography

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• Dyck, Michael (ed.) (16 June 2002). "GCIDE_XML", the GNU version of The Collaborative International Dictionary of English, presented in the Extensible Markup Language. Based on GCIDE version 0.46 (15 April 2002). Retrieved 21 April 2006.
• Miller, George A. (August 2003). WordNet (r) 2.0. Retrieved 21 April 2006.
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• Ward, Grady (ed.) (May 2002). Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0. "Project Gutenberg Presents: Moby Thesaurus II". "The Project Gutenberg License". Retrieved 21 April 2006.

Landforms Wetlands