Plural of 'clough,' a deep ravine or narrow valley, particularly in upland areas; a steep-sided gorge or glen.
From Old English 'cloh,' related to Old Norse 'klógr.' The word survives in Northern English and Welsh place names (like 'Winnats Clough'). It's cognate with 'cleugh' in Scots.
Clough is a geographical word almost entirely limited to place names in Northern England, Wales, and Scotland—it's a ghost word that survived in geography long after vanishing from everyday speech, a phenomenon linguists call 'lexical fossilization,' where terms persist in fixed expressions after dying everywhere else.
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