DCHP-2

slough (DCHP-1) † DCHP-1 (pre-1967)

• 1 n. — Prairie Provinces, West

  See 1902 quote at pothole (def. 3a).

  See also: pothole (def. 3a)  back bay  slough  

  • This meaning of slough, invariably pronounced [slu], is peculiar to the West and Northwest, roughly between the Lakehead and the Rockies. In B.C. the term, usually pronounced [slu], has taken on other meanings. In the East slough, usually pronounced [slaʊ] if used at all, is for most people a book word.

  • 1860  These sloughs are temporarily filled up with hay, a couple of loads of which being thrown into them, make a kind of floating bridge on the top of the mud--perfectly safe, economical, and expeditious.
  • 1909  In front of the old camp-fire was a little slough or lake, and this seemed a promising place to look for evidence.
  • 1948  On the prairies everything is a slough (pronounced slew): you cut hay in the slough, the little morainic lake is a slough, and so is the bleak waste of shining alkali on black mud. . . . It is not readily apparent how this name came to the prairies. It seems to have been in common use in England in the time of Bunyan (John not Paul) and his "Slough of Despond"; but appears to have skipped over all the swamps between the Atlantic and Lake Winnipeg to find an abiding home on the prairie.
  • 1962  Prairie grain growers often regard a pothole or pond or slough on their land as a soggy nuisance.

• 2a n. — B.C.

  a low-lying meadow subject to flooding during spring runoffs and productive in hay.

  See also: slough meadow  

  • 1860  This slough will be worked until the river commences to rise, when it will have to be abandoned for high-water diggings.
  • 1887  (1888)  . . . one morning the lodge was pitched by a little brook, in a pretty grassy valley libelled under the name of mud slough.
  • 1905  The sloughs were full of water, the trails thick with soft and sticky mire.

• 2b n. — B.C.

  a widening in a creek to create a mud-bottomed, swampy stretch.

  See also: slough-creek  back bay  slough  

  • 1858  A trail had to be made over high mountains, through ten inches of snow, wade sloughs waist deep; the cold was intense, and the underbrush thick and passed with difficulty.
  • 1955  At the Pan Meadow . . . two small, mud-bottomed creeks merged into a long, dangerous slough where several springs bubbled up out of the mud.

• 2c n.

  an inlet; lagoon.

  See also: back bay  

  • 1859  At Old Langley, the slough is entirely frozen up. The main channel is open down to New Langley.
  • 1887  (1888)  The water therefore was falling rapidly, and leaving on either side huge marshy lagoons known as sloughs (pronounced sloo).
  • 1963  The cutthroats could start feeding on the first hatches of pink salmon fry in the sloughs and lower reaches of the rivers.

• 3 n. — Northwest

  a narrow, meandering, sluggish side-channel of a river, usually shallow and often coming to a dead end.

  See also: snye (def. 2a)  back bay  

  • 1880  At the same time there are many sloughs, or "slews" so-called, where part of the river flows by some devious and half-hidden course, that might, when they blend again with the main current, be mistaken for tributary streams.
  • 1899  The flat-bottomed river steamers continued on their course until the ice in the river led them to seek a slough or side-channel for safety.
  • 1960  For two hours we flew across . . . a land of great rivers, green little sloughs, and broad empty valleys. . . .