A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words 1039 entries

clough

KLUF
A clough is a steep-sided wooded ravine with a stream at the bottom, the northern English form of a landform that every upland region names. Cloughs cut back into the moor edge in the Pennines and hold trees where the open hill has none, which makes them visible from a distance as green lines running up a brown slope.
Etymology
The word comes from Old English and means a cleft or a gorge. It is the same word as the Scots and Border cleugh, and the two spellings simply mark which side of the line you are standing on. English has an unusual number of words for a small steep valley and most of them are regional rather than technical.
Notes
The surname Clough comes from the landform, as do Cleugh and Clow. Pennine cloughs are where the last remnants of upland oak and birch woodland survived, because the sides were too steep to graze and too awkward to clear.
Old English river terrain water
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