slough of despond

Etymology
From the name of a in  (1678) by English writer and preacher  (1628–1688).

Noun

 * 1) A dreary bog or marsh.
 * 2) * 1838,, Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada, London: Saunders and Otley, 471086385 ; republished in Sketches in Canada, and Rambles among the Red Men, new edition, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1852,  11378706 , page 118:
 * The road was scarcely passable; there were no longer cheerful farms and clearings, but the dark pine forest, and the rank swamp, crossed by those terrific corduroy paths (my bones ache at the mere recollection!) and deep holes and pools of rotted vegetable matter, mixed with water, black, bottomless sloughs of despond! The very horses paused on the brink of some of these mud-gulfs, and trembled ere they made the plunge downwards.
 * 1)  A state of disheartening hopelessness.
 * 1)  A state of disheartening hopelessness.
 * 1)  A state of disheartening hopelessness.