Word of the Day

: April 25, 2018

slew

noun SLOO

What It Means

: a large number

slew in Context

Daniel regularly receives a slew of clothing catalogs as part of his junk mail.

"We had two weeks off and wanted to take a fun mother-daughter trip to Europe but didn't want to grapple with the slew of flights we'd have to take to visit multiple cities or the constant unpacking and packing involved on such a trip." — Shivani Vora, The New York Times, 11 Mar. 2018

Did You Know?

Slew appeared as an American colloquialism in the early 19th century. Its origins are unclear, but it is perhaps taken from the Irish slua, a descendant of Old Irish slúag, meaning "army," "host," or "throng." Slew has several homographs (words that are spelled alike but different in meaning, derivation, or pronunciation) in English. These include: slew as the past tense of the verb slay; slew as a spelling variant of slough, a word which is also commonly pronounced \SLOO\ and which means "swamp," "an inlet on a river," or "a creek in a marsh or tide flat"; and the verb slew, meaning "to turn, veer, or skid."