It's Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day podcast for October 1st.
Today's word is slew, spelled S-L-E-W.
Slew is a noun.
It's an informal word for a large number of people or things.
Here's the word used in a sentence from Bon Appetit.
The non-alcoholic drinks category has expanded so much in recent years that it's not uncommon
to find a list of thoughtful, complex, non-alcoholic beverages on a bar or restaurant's cocktail menu.
Yes, even outside of the major cities.
And it's even easier to enjoy alcohol-free beverages at home, thanks to a slew of brands
making really good alcohol alternatives that you can order online and have delivered directly to your door.
Slough appeared as an American colloquialism in the early 19th century.
Its origins are unclear, but it may have come from the Irish word slough,
a descendant of sloughag, an old Irish word meaning army, host, or throng.
Indeed, the earliest known uses of slew appear in a martial context from a historical novel by Daniel Pierce
Thompson about Vermont and the Green Mountain Boys, a militia organized in Vermont during the American Revolution.
In one scene, one of the boys tells leader Ethan Allen that there's more than a hundred slew of men coming.
Later, British General Burgoyne is said to have drawn up a whole slew of cannon.
But despite this early military setting, SLU is not limited to troops or artillery.
A SLU of data shows the word describing nearly anything existing in abundance.
With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.