the.com/slough
a shed skin or a swamp, depending on whether you're a snake or a town
means To slough is to shed or cast off an outer layer (like dead skin), while a slough is a swamp, bog, or muddy hollow — and in places it's the name of a town.
from The two senses sit in one spelling but ride from different roots. The 'swamp' slough is the older, from Old English 'slōh,' a miry place — a cousin of muddy, low-ground words across Germanic. The 'shed skin' slough (rhyming with 'rough') arrived later in Middle English, originally meaning a cast-off snake skin or dead matter sloughing from a wound; its earlier history is murky, possibly tied to Low German or Scandinavian terms for husk or shell. English, never one to waste a spelling, let both meanings share the page — and then handed them different pronunciations just to keep everyone honest.
- snake trick
- reptiles slough whole skins inside-out like socks
- two sounds
- rhymes with cow as bog, with rough as skin
- slough of despond
- Bunyan's literary mud trap for sinners
- medical
- dead tissue sloughs off healing wounds
- english town
- Slough hosts the UK's largest trading estate
great dismal swamp — massive swamp spanning virginia and north carolina, ~750 square miles, drained by the dismal swamp canal
everglades — vast wetland in southern florida covering ~1.5 million acres, unesco world heritage site