While I'll freely admit my formerly steel-trap mind has, occasionally of
late, shown characteristics of a polyethylene colander, I took a look at my
newer dictionary, dated 1971, since I seem to have misplaced the 1957
Webster, which I used during the years I was learning the proper grammar,
syntax, and orthography of the language. However, I find not only evidence
supporting my conception of this slippery word, but certainly as much
evidence as would convince nearly anyone that all these assertions that have
arisen about slew, slough, slue, or whatever, with the one exception that
the two pronunciations of slough I've found are either 'sloo' or 'slow' but
I'd not be surprised to find others elsewhere.
This turns out to be a can of worms, which was not what I intended. Back in
the '50's I was taken "jump-shooting" at ducks in a slough pronounced as
'sloo' and was given to the notion that when one said "a whole (pronounced)
slew/slough/or whatever" what was meant was 'slough.' Having now examined
this veritable quagmire of denotations, connotations, and puported
pronunciations, I feel that I now know less than when I began. <sigh>
Dick
----- Original Message -----
From: Pete Turnbull <pete_at_dunnington.u-net.com>
To: <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Saturday, April 08, 2000 7:10 PM
Subject: Re: !Re: Nuke Redmond!
> On Apr 8, 10:13, Richard Erlacher wrote:
>
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner <spc_at_armigeron.com>
>
> > > The project he's on is a complete disaster as the manager went for a
> > > Microsoft solution using slews of programs
>
> > BTW, your apparent juxtaposition of one word for its homomymn, and it
> > happens all too often with this particular one. There's this term,
> > pronounced "sloo" which is often misspelled "slew" but which should be
> > "slough" also pronounced "sloo" meaning a swamp or quagmire.
>
> Eh? Perhaps American pronunciation differs, but over here "slough"
> (meaning swamp) is pronounced to rhyme with "plough" ('plow') :-) Anyway,
> "slew" means "large number or quantity" [Oxford English Dictionary], which
> I'm sure is what Sean means... On the other hand, "slough" pronounced
> "sluff" means dead tissue that drops off from living flesh. Given the
> context...
>
> --
>
> Pete Peter Turnbull
> Dept. of Computer Science
> University of York
Received on Sun Apr 09 2000 - 00:56:26 BST