slough

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A depression or hollow, usually filled with deep mud or mire.
2. n. A stagnant swamp, marsh, bog, or pond, especially as part of a bayou, inlet, or backwater.
3. n. A state of deep despair or moral degradation.
4. n. The dead outer skin shed by a reptile or amphibian.
5. n. Medicine A layer or mass of dead tissue separated from surrounding living tissue, as in a wound, sore, or inflammation.
6. n. An outer layer or covering that is shed.
7. v. To be cast off or shed; come off: The snake's skin sloughs off.
8. v. To shed a slough.
9. v. Medicine To separate from surrounding living tissue. Used of dead tissue.
10. v. To discard as undesirable or unfavorable; get rid of: slough off former associates.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A hole full of deep mud or mire; a quagmire of considerable depth and comparatively small extent of surface.
2. n. (slö), A marshy hollow; a reedy pond; also, a long shallow ravine, or open creek, which becomes partly or wholly dry in summer.
3. n. Synonyms Swamp, etc. See marsh.
4. n. The skin of a serpent, usually the cast skin; also, any part of an animal that is naturally shed or molted; a cast; an exuvium.
5. n. In pathology, a dead part of tissue which separates from the surrounding living tissue, and is cast off in the act of sloughing.
6. n. A husk.
7. To come off as a slough: often with off. To be shed, cast, molted, or exuviated, as the skin of a snake.
8. To cast off a slough.
9. To cast off as a slough; in pathology, to throw off, as a dead mass from an ulcer or a wound.
10. A Middle English variant of slow.

Wiktionary

1. n. The skin shed by a snake or other reptile.
2. n. Dead skin on a sore or ulcer.
3. v. transitive To shed (skin).
4. v. transitive, card games To discard.
5. n. UK A muddy or marshy area.
6. n. 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.
7. n. Western United States A secondary channel of a river delta, usually flushed by the tide.
8. n. A state of depression.
9. n. Canadian Prairies A small pond, often alkaine, many but not all are formed by glacial potholes.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. adj. obsolete Slow.
2. n. A place of deep mud or mire; a hole full of mire.
3. n. A wet place; a swale; a side channel or inlet from a river.
4. imp. of slee, to slay. Slew.
5. n. The skin, commonly the cast-off skin, of a serpent or of some similar animal.
6. n. (Med.) The dead mass separating from a foul sore; the dead part which separates from the living tissue in mortification.
7. v. (Med.) To form a slough; to separate in the form of dead matter from the living tissues; -- often used with off, or away
8. v. To cast off; to discard as refuse.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a stagnant swamp (especially as part of a bayou)
2. n. any outer covering that can be shed or cast off (such as the cast-off skin of a snake)
3. n. a hollow filled with mud
4. v. cast off hair, skin, horn, or feathers
5. n. necrotic tissue; a mortified or gangrenous part or mass