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Clough
Definitions
- 1 A surname transferred from the common noun.
- 2 A village and townland in County Down, Northern Ireland.
- 3 A village in County Laois, Ireland.
- 4 An extinct town in Meade County, South Dakota, United States.
- 1 A narrow valley; a cleft in a hillside; a ravine, glen, or gorge. Northern-England, US
"The day-sky glimmered on the dew[…] And lurked in heath and braken clough"
- 2 Alternative form of cloff (“allowance of two pounds in every three hundredweight”). alt-of, alternative, historical
"Tare, Trett, and Clough, are to be deducted out of the Gross Weight; and the remainder is the Neat Weight of such Goods; for which the trader pays the Merchant who sells them, at so much per Hundred, Pound, &c. according to Agreement."
- 3 A sluice used in returning water to a channel after depositing its sediment on the flooded land.
"I have, accordingly, estimated the depth of drain at the lower end to be 1 foot 6 inches deeper than the fill of the clough, and given it a progressive rise to suit with 5 feet depth below the surface at its head."
- 4 The cleft or fork of a tree; crotch. dialectal
"The same praise should not be refused to the North-countryman who talks of "the clough" of the tree, literally the valley, the cleft, where the branches part."
- 5 A wood; weald. dialectal
Etymology
From Middle English clough, clow, cloȝ, from Old English *clōh, from Proto-Germanic *klanhaz, *klanhō (“cleft, sluice, abyss”), of uncertain origin, possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *gel- (“to form into a ball”). Cognate with Scots cleuch (“gorge; ravine”), Old High German klāh (in placenames), Old High German klingo, klinga (“brook, cataract, gulf, rapids”). Perhaps conflated or influenced by Old Norse klofi (“a cleft or rift in a hill, ravine”); compare Dutch kloof (“a slit, crevice, chink”). See also cling, clove.
* As an English surname, from the noun clough. * As a Welsh surname, from cloff (“lame”), from Late Latin cloppus, perhaps ultimately imitative of a limping person. * As an Irish place name, from Irish an Chloch, "the stone".
See also for "clough"
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