bayou

• buyou (dated)
• byo (obsolete)

From Cajun French bayou, from Choctaw bayuk (“creek”). Doublet of bogue.

• IPA^(key): /ˈbaɪ.(j)uː/, /ˈbaɪ.oʊ/

• Audio (US):

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bayou (plural bayous)

1. A slow-moving, often stagnant creek or river.
   • 1892, Walt Whitman, “A Leaf for Hand in Hand”, in Leaves of Grass […], Philadelphia, Pa.: David McKay, publisher, […], →OCLC, page 109:

     You natural persons old and young! / You on the Mississippi and on all the branches and bayous of the Mississippi! / You friendly boatmen and mechanics! you roughs!

2. A swamp; a marshy (stagnant) body of water.
   • 1886, Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant‎^[1], volume 2:

     At that time I had no staff officer who could be trusted with that duty. In the woods, at a short distance below the clearing, I found a depression, dry at the time, but which at high water became a slough or bayou.

• Used almost exclusively to refer to bodies of water in Louisiana and adjoining areas, including southern Mississippi, Alabama, eastern Texas, Arkansas, and Florida.

• Ayoub, Yoabu, boyau

Borrowed from Choctaw bayuk (“creek”).

• IPA^(key): /ba.ju/

• Audio (Canada):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ju

bayou m (plural bayous)

1. a stagnant body of water left behind by the meandering of the Mississippi River in Louisiana or elsewhere; a bayou

• “bayou”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.