English Language & Usage Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for linguists, etymologists, and serious English language enthusiasts. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Which is the proper word to use to indicate a large amount of something - "slough" or "slew"? Eg:
StackExchange now has a slough of potential new sites in Area51.
English.stackexchange.com has a slew of questions about pronunciation.
Google indicates "a slew of" is more popular than "a slough of", but isn't slew the past tense of slay? It seems that slough, as in a slow moving channel of water, would be a better metaphor. No?
The phrase is definitely "a slew of". This meaning of the word slew comes from Irish slue "crowd" and has nothing to do with the verb to slay; the fact that the two words are spelled identically is just another accident of language evolution.
Fact
Indeed, slew is the past tense of slay. However, slew is also a verb in its own right that means turn!
In American informal usage*, the noun slew, as you rightly indicated, indicates a large number. As in your second example, slew of questions is not an uncommon phrase. Thus, the usage of slough in a similar vein would be incorrect. That slough and slew could both be pronounced in the same way is a possible reason for the confusion of the two in writing.
The noun slough primarily means swamp or bog, and it often has a dreary or negative connotation, e.g. Slough of Despond (John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progess), slough of moral filth, etc. It can also be spelled slew!
Opinion
Frankly, I do not at all think slough would be a better metaphor, as you suggest. Furthermore, I do not think the etymology of the [US informal] noun slew has any relation to that of the verb slay or its past tense.*
Addendum*
Interestingly, Merriam-Webster suggests the origin of the noun slew thus:
perhaps from Irish slua army, host, throng, from Old Irish slúag;
*According to the Cambridge Dictionaries Online
