Word-Built World: slough

slough

/sləf/

verb

verb: slough; 3rd person present: sloughs; past tense: sloughed; past participle: sloughed; gerund or present participle: sloughing

  1. shed or remove (a layer of dead skin).”a snake sloughs off its old skin”
    • get rid of (something undesirable or no longer required).”he is concerned to slough off the country’s bad environmental image”
    • (of dead skin) drop off; be shed.
    • (of soil or rock) collapse or slide into a hole or depression.

noun

noun: slough

  1. the dropping off of dead tissue from living flesh.”the drugs can cause blistering and slough”

Origin

Middle English (as a noun denoting a skin, especially the outer skin shed by a snake): perhaps related to Low German slu(we ) ‘husk, peel’. The verb dates from the early 18th century.

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