sloughs

Sheds dead skin

Sloughs is the plural of slough, a word with two pronunciations and meanings.

Rhyming with "coo," a slough is a swamp, marsh, or muddy backwater: We paddled through the sloughs of the delta.

Rhyming with "stuff," slough means to shed or cast off—skin, dead tissue, or figuratively, unwanted things: The snake sloughs its skin; She sloughed off her old habits.

The verb form sloughs follows the same pattern: He sloughs through paperwork means he discards it carelessly.

wetlands

bog

Acidic peat wetland

fenLow marshy ground
mireBoggy, waterlogged terrain
swampWaterlogged land with vegetation

bayou · marshland · peatland · quagmire · morass · backwater · estuary · mangrove · saltmarsh · reedbed

shedding

molts

Sheds outer covering periodically

peelsRemoves outer covering
exfoliatesRemoves surface skin cells
shedsLoses or stores

flakes · shucks · discards · skin · scales · snakeskin · cuticle · bark · husk · chrysalis

discarding

sheds

Loses or stores

abandonsCeases to support
jettisonsDeliberately throws away
discardsThings thrown away

releases · relinquishes · divests · drops · rids · dispenses · habits · burdens · inhibitions · past

decay

necrosis

Localized cell death

gangreneTissue death from bloodlessness
escharNecrotic tissue crust
ulcerationFormation of open sores

wound · lesion · bedsore · festering · rotting · putrefaction · decomposing · debridement · septic · infected

sloughs

bog

molts

sheds

necrosis

sloughs

Opposites

Phrases

Categories

Family