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A place of deep mud or mire; a hole full of mire. Chaucer. He's here stuck in a slough. Milton.

The act of casting off the skin or shell, as do insects and crustaceans; ecdysis.

Full of sloughs, miry.

dish pearl-colored specks or flakes in the mouth, on the lips, etc., terminating in white sloughs. They are commonly characteristic of thrush.

ink and stick, as in mud and mire. At another time, he was bogged up to the middle in the slough of Lochend. Sir W. Scott.

A corroding or sloughing ulcer; esp. a spreading gangrenous ulcer or collection of ulcers in or about the mouth; -- called also water canker, canker of the mouth, and noma.

of the trunk or back of the neck, characterized by brawny hardness of the affected parts, sloughing of the skin and deeper tissues, and marked constitutional depression. It differs from a boil in size, tendency to spread, and the absence of a central core, and is frequently fatal. It is also called anthrax.…

Despondency. [Obs.] The slough of despond. Bunyan.

A dry slough, crust, or scab, which separates from the healthy part of the body, as that produced by a burn, or the application of caustics.

That which retards; an obstacle; an obstruction. Hills, sloughs, and other terrestrial retardations. Sir W. Scott.

A slough; a run or wet place. See 2d Slough, 2.

(first flat, subsequently umbilicated) and then pustules, and finally thick crusts which slough after a certain time, often leaving a pit, or scar.

Gangrenous part; gangrene; slough.

The slough, or cast skin, of a serpent or other animal. [Obs.] Bacon. Spoil bank, a bank formed by the earth taken from an excavation, as of a canal. -- The spoils system, the theory or practice of regarding public and their emoluments as so much plunder to be distributed among their active partisans by those who are…

trate, as a ram, by binding the testicles tightly with a string, so that they mortify and slough off. [Prov. Eng.]

ntil a team of cattle could be procured from some neighboring farm to tug them out of the slough. Macaulay.

That in which any person or thing welters, or wallows; filth; mire; slough. The foul welter of our so-called religious or other controversies. Carlyle.