It's the Word of the Day for April 23rd.
Today's word is slough, spelled S-L-O-U-G-H.
Slough is a verb.
It's a formal word used for the action of getting rid of something unwanted.
It's usually used with the word off.
Slough can also mean to lose a dead layer of skin or to become shed or cast off.
Here's the word used in a sentence from Nine Tails, Nine Tails, by Sally Nguyen Mau.
Before she left her apartment, she gathered and washed some in a bowl.
Then she drew a bath and soaked for a while,
eating the figs one by one, swallowing even the hard stems.
The steam and water loosened her tense muscles and her aches started to vanish.
She scrubbed herself until the dead skin sloughed off, and underneath she was new.
There are two verbs spelled S-L-O-U-G-H in English,
as well as two nouns, and both sets have different pronunciations.
The first noun, referring to a swamp or a discouraged state of mind,
is pronounced to rhyme with either blue or cow.
Its related verb, which can mean to plod through mud, has the same pronunciation.
The second noun, pronounced to rhyme with cuff, refers to the shed skin of a snake,
as well as anything else that has been cast off.
Its related verb describes the action of shedding or eliminating something,