Noun: sluff
| Singular | sluff |
| Plural | sluffs |
Sample Sentences
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That is the sluff of a rattler; we must be careful.
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This is the sluff that came off of his skin after the burn.
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The Scouts learned from expert Keith Burke that snow avalanches come in different forms. A powder or "sluff" avalanche starts at a single point and fans out as surface snow slides downhill. These avalanches are not as violent as slab avalanches. Slab avalanches are very dangerous. They occur when a whole hillside of snow breaks loose in a giant slab, which then breaks into snow blocks that tumble downhill faster and faster. [2001 Mar, Buck Tilton, “Cold Comfort”, in Boys Life, volume 91, number 3, page 18:]
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At least for small sluffs like the ones Brown and his colleagues have triggered, the avalanche slides like a block of material instead of flowing like a fluid. [2002 March 2, Sid Perkins, “Avalanche! Scientists are digging out the secrets of lethal flows of snow.”, in The Free Library:]
Nouns inflected like sluff
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
From Middle English slough (“skin, husk, rind; cocoon; scales; cyst”), akin to Middle High German slûch (“slough”) (whence German Schlauch (“tube, hose”)). See: German Nouns '
Schlauch'.