DCHP-3

slough

DCHP-2 (Jul 2016)

Spelling variants:
invariably [slu:]

This entry complements the entry of the same name from DCHP-1, now headword slough DCHP-1. We considered it important to preserve the complex original entry, while supplying an updated version of what we consider the present-day core meanings (SD, 12 Jul. 2016)
1n. — Pairies

a low-lying meadow subject to flooding during spring runoffs.

Type: 3. Semantic Change — One of two major meanings today, this meaning, which is mostly found in the Prairies, is rather different from the permanent body of water in meaning 2.
See also Gage-3, s.v. "slough1" (1), which is marked "Cdn. Western Canada", ITP Nelson, s.v. "slough1" (2), which is marked "Western Canada" and COD-2, s.v. "slough1" (2), which is marked "Cdn (West) & US Northwest".
See: runoff,slough (DCHP-1)(def. 1)

Quotations

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.
1887
The water therefore was falling rapidly, and leaving on either side huge marshy lagoons known as sloughs (pronounced sloo).
1905
The sloughs were full of water, the trails thick with soft and sticky mire.
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.
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.
2007
Peggy, his companion since then, also has grown to understand the importance of hockey in Lorne's life and, thank God for her, realized what a horrible bachelor he would have been. An only child of gregarious parents Gertie and Cecil, [Lorne Davis]'s playing career started on the sloughs near Lumsden, Sask., led him to the Regina Pats as a player from 1947-50 and a coach from 1976- 78, to the NHL with stops in the International, American, Quebec and Western Hockey Leagues, and back to play senior hockey with the Regina Caps. He didn't have a stellar NHL career, scoring only 11 goals - "They were all big goals," he said with a grin - but it got him into the Regina Sports Hall of Fame.
2010
A 23-year-old Lanigan woman is in stable condition after her car rolled into a slough on Highway 16 just outside of the city limits Saturday morning. A passerby helped her escape the car, which was submerged upside down in the water, by the time emergency medical personnel and the Saskatoon fire department's water rescue team arrived just after 5 a.m.
2016
On the farming front, a lot of guys have picked Monday to start seeding. The sloughs that are going to dry up already have. The rest are too deep and will have water in them and will be a slough all year.
2n. — British Columbia, Yukon & Northwest Territories

a sidearm of a river; a bay cut off from the sea; a brackish body of water.

Type: 3. Semantic Change — West of the Rockies, the term has a different meaning and is used for more substantial bodies of water that remain in place year-round.
See also COD-2, s.v. "slough1" (3), which is marked "Cdn (BC)", Gage-1, s.v. "slough1" (3), which is marked "Cdn. in the Northwest".
See: slough (DCHP-1)(defs. 2a, 2b, 2c & 3)
Note how we combined defnitions 2a, 2b, 2c and 3 from DCHP-1 into DCHP-2's meaning 2.

Quotations

1859
At Old Langley, the slough is entirely frozen up. The main channel is open down to New Langley.
1896
Here the moose remain till the deep snow drives them down to the lower ground, and eventually back to the river banks, where, if undisturbed, they pass the cold months without wandering far from some backwater or slough running up into the woods they have selected for winter quarters. The old bulls shed their horns in the beginning of January, the young ones a month later.
1908
Instead of brackish swamp water or salt sloughs, were clear-water lakes.
1957
Paul owned two sections on the shores of an immense slough known as Middle Lake that lies well to the east of Saskatoon.
1963
The cutthroats could start feeding on the first hatches of pink salmon fry in the sloughs and lower reaches of the rivers.
1984
They also scrounged for materials and did much of the welding as well. "It works like a charm," said Mr. Allen. "The fish returning upstream to spawn swim into a chamber that lifts them over the dam." There are about 60 kilometres of waterways linked to the river that drains Burnaby Lake and Deer Lake. As a result of all of the work, the once-brackish sloughs have become clear-running streams again. Salmon and trout spawn again in the side channels of Stoney Creek, Eagle Creek, Still Creek and Deer Lake Creek.
1996
So long as money was spent on studies, and permits were applied for, it was just fine to clearcut, scorch, tree farm, flood pristine valleys, clog marshes, streams and beaches with logging wastes, to spew pesticides, herbicides and poisoned bait across the countryside, to fish species after species to the brink of extermination, to channel river flows away from estuaries and sloughs, to bury wetlands such as Burns Bog under garbage and highways, and to spew chlorinated sewage into rivers we eat fish from.
2009
The discovery of seven dead trumpeter swans in a slough east of Vancouver has led to a call for tougher penalties against those who shoot the majestic cream-coloured birds. Environment Canada confirmed that someone had phoned in a report of several dead swans in the Nicomen Slough near Chilliwack. [...] The slough flows from the Fraser River around an island, and about 200 swans, as well as geese and ducks, winter there.
2016
Extensive planning to raise the dike by one metre from Young Road at the Hope Slough, to the base of Chilliwack Mountain, kicked off this week with public meetings.

References

  • COD-2
  • ITP Nelson
  • Gage-3
  • DCHP-1
  • Gage-1