SLOUGH

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does slough mean? 

• SLOUGH (noun)
  The noun SLOUGH has 4 senses:

1. necrotic tissue; a mortified or gangrenous part or mass

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)

  Familiarity information: SLOUGH used as a noun is uncommon.

• SLOUGH (verb)
  The verb SLOUGH has 1 sense:

1. cast off hair, skin, horn, or feathers

  Familiarity information: SLOUGH used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SLOUGH (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Necrotic tissue; a mortified or gangrenous part or mass

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

gangrene; slough; sphacelus

Hypernyms ("slough" is a kind of...):

pathology (any deviation from a healthy or normal condition)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "slough"):

cold gangrene; dry gangrene; mumification necrosis; mummification ((pathology) gangrene that develops in the presence of arterial obstruction and is characterized by dryness of the dead tissue and a dark brown color)

clostridial myonecrosis; emphysematous gangrene; emphysematous phlegmon; gangrenous emphysema; gas gangrene; gas phlegmon; progressive emphysematous necrosis ((pathology) a deadly form of gangrene usually caused by clostridium bacteria that produce toxins that cause tissue death; can be used as a bioweapon)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A hollow filled with mud

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural objects (not man-made)

Hypernyms ("slough" is a kind of...):

bog; peat bog (wet spongy ground of decomposing vegetation; has poorer drainage than a swamp; soil is unfit for cultivation but can be cut and dried and used for fuel)

Derivation:

sloughy ((of soil) soft and watery)

Sense 3

Meaning:

A stagnant swamp (especially as part of a bayou)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural objects (not man-made)

Hypernyms ("slough" is a kind of...):

swamp; swampland (low land that is seasonally flooded; has more woody plants than a marsh and better drainage than a bog)

Sense 4

Meaning:

Any outer covering that can be shed or cast off (such as the cast-off skin of a snake)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural objects (not man-made)

Hypernyms ("slough" is a kind of...):

cover; covering; natural covering (a natural object that covers or envelops)

Derivation:

slough (cast off hair, skin, horn, or feathers)

• SLOUGH (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they slough    ... he / she / it sloughs   
Past simple: sloughed   
Past participle: sloughed   
-ing form: sloughing   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Cast off hair, skin, horn, or feathers

Classified under:

Verbs of grooming, dressing and bodily care

Synonyms:

exuviate; molt; moult; shed; slough

Context example:

our dog sheds every Spring

Hypernyms (to "slough" is one way to...):

cast; cast off; drop; shake off; shed; throw; throw away; throw off (get rid of)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "slough"):

desquamate; peel off (peel off in scales)

Sentence frame:

Something ----s

Derivation:

slough (any outer covering that can be shed or cast off (such as the cast-off skin of a snake))

sloughing (the process whereby something is shed)

 Context examples 

He gets a dry, hacking cough as the dead tissue sloughs away, and dies the following summer of pneumonia, wondering what it's all about.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

The highly vascularized outer layer of the endometrium facing the uterine cavity which develops over the course of the proliferative and secretory phases then degenerates and sloughs off during menstruation.

(Functional Layer of the Endometrium, NCI Thesaurus)

I wrestled with my own resolution: I wanted to be weak that I might avoid the awful passage of further suffering I saw laid out for me; and Conscience, turned tyrant, held Passion by the throat, told her tauntingly, she had yet but dipped her dainty foot in the slough, and swore that with that arm of iron he would thrust her down to unsounded depths of agony.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

The Menstrual Cycle involves regularly recurring hormonal changes and physiologic endometrial changes during the reproductive period in human females, and some primates, and culminates in partial sloughing of the endometrium (menstruation) in the absence of fertilization.

(Menstrual cycle, NCI Thesaurus)

And thus for a time I was occupied by exploded systems, mingling, like an unadept, a thousand contradictory theories and floundering desperately in a very slough of multifarious knowledge, guided by an ardent imagination and childish reasoning, till an accident again changed the current of my ideas.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

“That comes—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. I think it most probable—though of course it's only an opinion—that you'll all have the deuce to pay before you get that malaria out of your systems. Camp in a bog, would you? Silver, I'm surprised at you. You're less of a fool than many, take you all round; but you don't appear to me to have the rudiments of a notion of the rules of health.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)