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PlainSpell

slough

/slʌf/noun, verb

slough is spelled S-L-O-U-G-H: 6 letters and one syllable. It appears 1.1 times per million words in written English, the 26,776th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). People search “slew vs slough” about 140 times a month (Google, United States). As a noun, slough means “The skin shed by a snake or other reptile” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of slough is sloughs.

How many letters and syllables are in slough?

Letters6: S-L-O-U-G-H
Syllables1 (from its American pronunciation)
In writing1.1 times per million words; the 26,776th most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searchednone measured in search
Pairs people search
Rhymes with

Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.

How common is slough?

Slough appears 1.1 times per million words in written English, the 26,776th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How do you pronounce slough?

  • US /slʌf/
  • Australia /slɐf/
  • /slʊf/

As a noun (“A marshy or muddy area”): /slaʊ/, /slaʊ/, /sluː/.

Slough has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-slough2.ogg, En-us-slough1.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Words people confuse with slough

Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).

slew vs slough140 G

Also written: slew.

Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).

What rhymes with slough?

The 12 most written words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as slough from its last stressed vowel (/ʌf/):

Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).

Forms of slough

  • sloughs plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • sluff
  • sloughing participle, present
  • sloughed participle, past
  • slue
  • slew

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What does slough mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

noun

  1. 1

    The skin shed by a snake or other reptile.

    That is the slough of a rattler; we must be careful.

  2. 2

    Dead skin on a sore or ulcer.

    This is the slough that came off of his skin after the burn.

  3. 3

    A marshy or muddy area.

  4. 4

    A type of swamp or shallow lake system, typically formed as or by the backwater of a larger waterway, similar to a bayou with trees.

    We paddled under a canopy of trees through the slough.

  5. 5

    USA secondary channel of a river delta, usually flushed by the tide.

    The Sacramento River Delta contains dozens of sloughs that are often used for water-skiing and fishing.

  6. 6

    A state of depression.

    John is in a slough.

  7. 7

    A small pond, often alkaline, many but not all formed by glacial potholes.

    Potholes or sloughs formed by a glacier’s retreat from the central plains of North America, are now known to be some of the world’s most productive ecosystems.

verb

  1. 1

    To shed skin or outer layers.

    This skin is being sloughed.

  2. 2

    To slide off or flake off, as an outer layer, such as skin, might do.

    A week after he was burned, a layer of skin on his arm sloughed off.

  3. 3

    To discard.

    East sloughed a heart.

  4. 4

    USslangTo commit truancy, be absent from school without permission.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Slough in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchmue (the skin shed by a snake or other reptile), escarre (dead skin on a sore or ulcer)
Germanabgestreifte Haut (the skin shed by a snake or other reptile), Schorf, Kruste (dead skin on a sore or ulcer), sich häuten, abwerfen (to shed (skin)), sich lösen (of skin, to be shed)
Portugueseatoleiro, lamaçal, pântano (muddy or marshy area)
Spanishzanja (secondary channel of a river delta), agüite (state of depression)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does slough come from?

From Middle English slogh, slugh, slouh, from Proto-Germanic *sluk-, perhaps related to *sleupaną (“to slip, sneak”) (compare Gothic 𐍃𐌻𐌹𐌿𐍀𐌰𐌽 (sliupan)). Akin to Middle Low German slô (“sheath, skin on a hoof”). Perhaps also related with Old Saxon slūk (“snakeskin”), Middle High German slūch, whence German Schlauch (“waterskin, hose”).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What to look up after slough