dead
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A dead pigeon
English
Etymology
From Middle English ded, deed, from Old English dēad, from Proto-West Germanic *daud, from Proto-Germanic *daudaz.
Compare West Frisian dead, dea, Dutch dood, German tot, Danish, Norwegian død, Norwegian Nynorsk daud.
Pronunciation
- enPR: dĕd, IPA(key): /dɛd/
Audio (US) (file) Audio (AU) (file) - Rhymes: -ɛd
- (West Country) IPA(key): /diːd/
Adjective
dead (not generally comparable, comparative deader, superlative deadest)
- (usually not comparable) No longer living; deceased. (Also used as a noun.)
- 1968, Ray Thomas, "Legend of a Mind", The Moody Blues, In Search of the Lost Chord.
- Timothy Leary's dead. / No, no no no, he's outside, looking in.
- All of my grandparents are dead.
- Have respect for the dead.
- The villagers are mourning their dead.
- The dead are always with us, in our hearts.
- raise the dead
- wake the dead
- 1968, Ray Thomas, "Legend of a Mind", The Moody Blues, In Search of the Lost Chord.
- (usually not comparable) Devoid of living things; barren.
- a dead planet
- 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:
- Behold the substance from which all things draw their energy, the bright Spirit of the Globe, without which it cannot live, but must grow cold and dead as the dead moon.
- 1913, Arthur Conan Doyle, “(please specify the page)”, in The Poison Belt , London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:
- Was it possible to exist upon a dead world?
- (hyperbolic) Figuratively, not alive; lacking life.
- 1600, William Shakespeare, As You Like It, act III, scene 3:
- When a man's verses cannot be understood, nor a man's good wit seconded with the forward child, understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room.
- (of another person) So hated or offensive as to be absolutely shunned, ignored or ostracized.
- He is dead to me.
- Doomed; marked for death; as good as dead (literally or as a hyperbole).
- "You come back here this instant! Oh, you're dead, mister!"
- Without emotion; impassive.
- She stood with dead face and limp arms, unresponsive to my plea.
- Stationary; static; immobile or immovable.
- the dead load on the floor
- a dead lift
- Without interest to one of the senses; dull; flat.
- dead air
- a dead glass of soda.
- 1969 March 31, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five (A Seymour Lawrence Book), New York, N.Y.: Delacorte Press, →OCLC, page 65:
- He stopped, took a swig of the dead champagne. It was like 7-Up.
- Unproductive; fallow.
- dead time
- dead fields
- Past, bygone, vanished.
- 1905, Lord Dunsany [i.e., Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany], The Gods of Pegāna, London: Elkin Mathews, , →OCLC, page 40:
- Then shall the Times that were be Times no more; and it may be that the old, dead days shall return from beyond the Rim, and we who have wept for them shall see those days again, as one who, returning from long travel to his home, comes suddenly on dear, remembered things.
- (of a place) Lacking usual activity; unexpectedly quiet or empty of people.
- (not comparable, of a machine, device, or electrical circuit) Completely inactive; currently without power; without a signal; not live.
- OK, the circuit's dead. Go ahead and cut the wire.
- Now that the motor's dead you can reach in and extract the spark plugs.
- 1984, William Gibson, chapter 1, in Neuromancer (Sprawl; book 1), New York, N.Y.: Ace Books, →ISBN, page 3:
- The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
- 2008, BioWare, Mass Effect, Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Normandy SR-1:
- Joker: Everything cuts out after that. No comm traffic at all. Just goes dead. There's nothing.
- (of a battery) Unable to emit power, being discharged (flat) or faulty.
- (not comparable) Broken or inoperable.
- That monitor is dead; don’t bother hooking it up.
- (not comparable) No longer used or required.
- There are several dead laws still on the books regulating where horses may be hitched.
- Is this beer glass dead?
- 1984, Winston Smock, Technical Writing for Beginners, page 148:
- No mark of any kind should ever be made on a dead manuscript.
- 2017, Zhaomo Yang, Brian Johannesmeyer, Dead Store Elimination (Still) Considered Harmful:
- In this paper, we survey the set of techniques found in the wild that are intended to prevent data-scrubbing operations from being removed during dead store elimination.
- (engineering) Intentionally designed so as not to impart motion or power.
- the dead spindle of a lathe
- A dead axle, also called a lazy axle, is not part of the drivetrain, but is instead free-rotating.
- (not comparable, sports) Not in play.
- Once the ball crosses the foul line, it's dead.
- (not comparable, golf, of a golf ball) Lying so near the hole that the player is certain to hole it in the next stroke.
- (not comparable, baseball, slang, 1800s) Tagged out.
- (not comparable) Full and complete (usually applied to nouns involving lack of motion, sound, activity, or other signs of life).
- dead stop
- dead sleep
- dead giveaway
- dead silence
- (not comparable) Exact; on the dot.
- dead center
- dead aim
- a dead eye
- a dead level
- Experiencing pins and needles (paresthesia).
- After sitting on my hands for a while, my arms became dead.
- (acoustics) Constructed so as not to reflect or transmit sound; soundless; anechoic.
- a dead floor
- (obsolete) Bringing death; deadly.
- c. 1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Iohn”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, :
- You breathe these dead news in as dead an ear.
- (law) Cut off from the rights of a citizen; deprived of the power of enjoying the rights of property.
- A person who is banished or who becomes a monk is civilly dead.
- (rare, especially religion, often with "to") Indifferent to; having no obligation toward; no longer subject to or ruled by (sin, guilt, pleasure, etc).
- 1839, William Jenks, The Comprehensive Commentary on the Holy Bible: Acts-Revelation, page 361:
- He was dead to the law. Whatever account others might make of it, yet, for his part, he was dead to it. […] But though he was thus dead to the law, yet he […] was far from thinking himself discharged from his duty to God' on the contrary, he was dead to the law, that he might live unto God.
- 1849, Robert Haldane, Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans, page 255:
- But he died to the guilt of sin—to the guilt of his people's sins which he had taken upon him; and they, dying with him, as is above declared, die to sin precisely in the same sense in which he died to it. […] He was not justified from it till his resurrection, but from that moment he was dead to it. When he shall appear the second time, it will be "without sin."
- (linguistics) Of a syllable in languages such as Thai and Burmese: ending abruptly.
- Antonym: live
- 2011, Russ Crowley, Learning Thai, Your Great Adventure, page 28:
- […] syllable is dead, the tone will depend on whether the vowel is short or long.
Usage notes
- In Middle and Early Modern English, the phrase is dead was more common where the present perfect form has died is common today. Example:
- 1611, King James Bible
- I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain. (Gal. 2:21)
- In common uses, "has died" usually implies that the death of an organism has come from internal problems, whereas "is dead" is more commonly used to indicate external causes. For example, "Our dog has died," would be commonly used to indicate the death of a pet; whereas "The deer is dead," would be more commonly used in the context of hunting for meat.
Synonyms
- See also Thesaurus:dead
Antonyms
Translations
no longer alive
|
figuratively, not alive
idiomatic: hated
fully and completely motionless
|
without emotion
|
of a device: completely inactive; without power
broken or inoperable
no longer used or required
|
sports: not in play
experiencing pins and needles
Adverb
dead (not comparable)
- (degree, informal, colloquial) Exactly.
- dead right; dead level; dead flat; dead straight; dead left
- He hit the target dead in the centre.
- 2003 December 1, Brian Long, RX-7 Mazda’s Rotary Engine Sports Car: Updated & Enlarged Edition, Veloce Publishing Ltd, →ISBN, page 145:
- Independent tests later confirmed [the figures] to be accurate, with Car & Driver seeing 159mph (254kph), 0.60 in five seconds dead, and an amazingly high 0.97g.
- 2023 November 29, Peter Plisner, “The winds of change in Catesby Tunnel”, in RAIL, number 997, page 56:
- And because the tunnel is dead straight, it's perfect for reaching high speeds.
- (degree, informal, colloquial) Very, absolutely, extremely.
- dead wrong; dead set; dead serious; dead drunk; dead broke; dead earnest; dead certain; dead slow; dead sure; dead simple; dead honest; dead accurate; dead easy; dead scared; dead solid; dead black; dead white; dead empty
- 1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, , →OCLC, part I, page 216:
- I knew once a Scotch sailmaker who was certain, dead sure, there were people in Mars.
- Suddenly and completely.
- He stopped dead.
- (informal) As if dead.
- dead tired; dead quiet; dead asleep; dead pale; dead cold; dead still
- 1849 May – 1850 November, Charles Dickens, chapter 2, in The Personal History of David Copperfield, London: Bradbury & Evans, , published 1850, →OCLC:
- I was tired of reading, and dead sleepy.
Translations
exactly
|
very, absolutely, extremely, suddenly
|
Noun
dead (uncountable)
- (often with "the") Time when coldness, darkness, or stillness is most intense.
- The dead of night. The dead of winter.
- (with "the") Those (dead people) who have died.
- Will the dead rise again?
Translations
time when coldness, darkness, or stillness is most intense
|
Noun
dead (plural deads)
- (UK) (usually in the plural) Sterile mining waste, often present as many large rocks stacked inside the workings.
- (bodybuilding, colloquial) Clipping of deadlift.
Verb
dead (third-person singular simple present deads, present participle deading, simple past and past participle deaded)
- (transitive) To prevent by disabling; to stop.
- 1826, The Whole Works of the Right Rev. Edward Reynolds, Lord Bishop of Norwich, collected by Edward Reynolds, Benedict Riveley, and Alexander Chalmers. pp. 227. London: B. Holdsworth.
- “What a man should do, when finds his natural impotency dead him in spiritual works”
- 1826, The Whole Works of the Right Rev. Edward Reynolds, Lord Bishop of Norwich, collected by Edward Reynolds, Benedict Riveley, and Alexander Chalmers. pp. 227. London: B. Holdsworth.
- (transitive) To make dead; to deaden; to deprive of life, force, or vigour.
- 1614–1615, Homer, “(please specify the book number)”, in Geo[rge] Chapman, transl., Homer’s Odysses. , London: Rich Field , for Nathaniell Butter, published 1615, →OCLC; republished in The Odysseys of Homer, , volumes (please specify the book number), London: John Russell Smith, , 1857, →OCLC:
- Heaven's stern decree, / With many an ill, hath numb'd and deaded me.
- (transitive, UK, US, slang) To kill.
- 2006, Leighanne Boyd, Once Upon A Time In The Bricks, page 178:
- This dude at the club was trying to kill us so I deaded him, and then I had to collect from Spice.
- 2008, Marvlous Harrison, The Coalition, page 106:
- “What, you was just gonna dead him because if that's the case then why the fuck we getting the money?” Sha asked annoyed.
- 2020 January 6, Courtney A. Kemp, Matt K. Turner, 33:48 from the start, in Power, season 6, episode 11, spoken by Tommy Egan (E Joseph Sikora):
- TOMMY:”Honestly, I’d love to help you with that but I’ve got a surplus of motherfuckers that I need to dead right now.”
- (transitive, African-American Vernacular, slang, by extension) To discontinue or put an end to (something).
- 2005, Black Artemis, Picture Me Rollin', New York, N.Y.: New American Library, →ISBN, page 269:
- "I thought I told you to shut up," said Jesus. "I don't be laying up with chickenheads, so you need to dead that shit before you piss me the fuck off."
- 2013, Adam Mansbach, Rage Is Back, New York, N.Y.: Viking, →ISBN, page 140:
- "This might be kinda beside the point right now," I said carefully, settling into the chair across from him, "but it's probably time to dead all that open-door no-gun shit, huh?"
Related terms
Derived terms
Terms derived from the adjective, adverb, noun, or verb dead
- alveolar dead space
- anatomic dead space
- beat a dead horse
- better dead than Red
- better dead than red
- better Dead than Red
- better to be late than be dead on time
- bottom dead center
- braindead
- brain dead
- brain-dead
- clinically dead
- come back from the dead
- cut someone dead
- dead against
- dead air
- dead-air space
- dead-alive
- dead amiss
- dead-and-alive
- dead and buried
- dead and gone
- dead angle
- dead as a dodo
- dead as a doorknob
- dead as a doornail
- dead as a herring
- dead as a kipper
- dead as a mackerel
- dead as ditch-water
- dead asleep
- dead ball
- dead-ball era
- dead bat
- deadbeat
- dead-beat
- dead beat
- dead bedroom
- dead bell
- dead bird
- dead block
- dead-blow
- dead body
- dead bolt
- deadbolt
- dead-born
- deadborn
- dead-bug
- dead cake
- dead calm
- dead cat
- dead-cat bounce
- dead cat bounce
- dead center
- dead-center
- dead-centered
- dead centre
- dead cert
- dead click
- dead-clothes
- dead code
- dead coloring
- dead colouring
- dead comet
- dead dial
- dead donkey
- dead door
- dead dove
- dead-drop
- dead drop
- dead drunk
- dead duck
- dead-end
- dead end
- dead-ender
- deader than a doornail
- deader than disco
- dead-eye
- dead-eyed
- dead-eye Dick
- deadfall
- dead finish
- dead first
- dead fish
- dead flat
- dead fly biscuit
- dead freight
- dead from the neck up
- dead furrow
- dead giveaway
- dead ground
- dead hand
- deadhanded
- dead-handed
- dead-handedness
- dead hang
- deadhead
- deadheader
- deadheading
- dead-hearted
- deadhearted
- dead-heartedly
- deadheartedly
- dead-heartedness
- deadheartedness
- dead heat
- dead horse
- dead ice
- dead-in-shell
- dead inside
- dead internet theory
- dead in the train
- dead in the water
- dead key
- dead language
- dead last
- dead leg
- dead-leg
- dead letter
- dead letter office
- dead level
- dead-light
- deadlike
- dead line
- deadline
- dead link
- dead load
- deadlock
- dead loss
- dead man
- dead man's arm
- dead man's brake
- dead man's fingers
- dead man's float
- dead man's hand
- dead man's handle
- dead man's rope
- dead man's switch
- dead man walking
- dead-march
- dead march
- dead marine
- dead meat
- dead media
- dead melt
- dead-melt
- dead men
- dead men can tell no tales
- dead men's bells
- dead men's fingers
- dead men's shoes
- dead men tell no tales
- dead metaphor
- dead money
- dead-name
- dead name
- deadname
- dead-naming
- dead 'n' buried
- deadness
- deadnettle
- dead-nuts
- dead nuts
- dead of night
- dead of winter
- dead oil
- dead-on
- dead on
- dead on arrival
- dead on one's feet
- dead on the vine
- dead or alive
- deadpan
- dead pan
- dead-pan
- dead-pay
- dead person walking
- dead pixel
- dead plate
- dead pledge
- dead pool
- dead president
- dead reckoning
- dead-red
- dead ringer
- dead-ringer
- dead rise
- dead rising
- dead room
- dead-rope
- dead rubber
- dead run
- Dead Sea
- dead sea
- dead section
- dead serious
- dead set
- dead-set
- dead set against
- dead shot
- dead sleep
- dead soldier
- dead space
- dead spot
- dead stand
- dead stick
- dead sticking
- dead-stock
- dead stock
- dead-stroke
- dead-stroke hammer
- dead tail
- dead time
- dead tired
- dead to rights
- dead to the world
- dead-tree
- dead tree
- dead-tree edition
- dead tree edition
- dead wagon
- dead wall
- dead water
- dead week
- dead weight
- dead white European male
- dead wind
- dead woman walking
- deadwood
- Deadwood
- dead wood
- dead-wrong
- dead wrong
- dead yard
- dead zone
- double-dead meat
- draw dead
- drier than a dead dingo's donger
- drop dead
- drop-dead
- dry as a dead dingo's donga
- dry as a dead dingo's donger
- fit to wake the dead
- flog a dead horse
- flog a dead pony
- from my cold, dead hands
- from the dead
- genetic dead end
- half-dead
- half dead
- heavy as a dead donkey
- kill someone dead
- knock dead
- lantern of the dead
- leave for dead
- link-dead
- live end dead end
- living dead
- medium dead
- more dead than alive
- nearly-dead
- nose-dead
- not be caught dead
- over my dead body
- parallel dead space
- physiologic dead space
- play dead
- pre-dead
- put the dead wood on
- Queen Anne's dead
- raise from the dead
- raise the dead
- red dead man's fingers
- red-handed
- redhanded
- rise from the dead
- sit dead-red
- stone dead
- stone-dead
- stop dead
- temporal dead zone
- top dead center
- to wake the dead
- undead
- wake up dead
- walking dead
- wouldn't be caught dead
- wouldn't be seen dead
- you're a long time dead
References
- “dead”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
Anagrams
Chinese
Etymology
Pseudo back-formation from English deadline.
Pronunciation
Verb
dead
- (Hong Kong Cantonese, chiefly university slang) to be due by; to have a deadline of
French
Etymology
Pronunciation
Verb
dead
- (slang, anglicism) to succeed (in doing something well, "killing it")
- 2018, “Djadja”, in Djadja, performed by Aya Nakamura:
- J’suis pas ta catin Djadja, genre en catchana baby tu dead ça.
- I ain't your bitch Djadja, as if you kill it doing doggystyle, baby.
Usage notes
The verb is left unconjugated: il dead, il a dead. Usage is limited to the present, as well as an infinitive or a past participle.
Old English
Alternative forms
- ᛞᛠᛞ (dead) — Near Fakenham plaque
Etymology
From Proto-West Germanic *daud, from Proto-Germanic *daudaz. Cognate with Old Frisian dād, Old Saxon dōd, Old High German tōt, Old Norse dauðr, Gothic 𐌳𐌰𐌿𐌸𐍃 (dauþs).
Pronunciation
Adjective
dēad
- dead
- late 9th century, translation of Orosius’ History Against the Pagans
- Phillippus him dyde heora wīġ unweorð, ōð hyne ān Cwēne scēat þurh þæt þēoh, þæt þæt hors wæs dēad, þe hē on ufan sæt.
- Phillippus did them their battle ignoble, until a queen shot him through the thigh, that the horse was dead, which he sat on at the top.
- late 9th century, translation of Orosius’ History Against the Pagans
Declension
Declension of dēad — Strong
| Singular | Masculine | Feminine | Neuter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nominative | dēad | dēad | dēad |
| Accusative | dēadne | dēade | dēad |
| Genitive | dēades | dēadre | dēades |
| Dative | dēadum | dēadre | dēadum |
| Instrumental | dēade | dēadre | dēade |
| Plural | Masculine | Feminine | Neuter |
| Nominative | dēade | dēada, dēade | dēad |
| Accusative | dēade | dēada, dēade | dēad |
| Genitive | dēadra | dēadra | dēadra |
| Dative | dēadum | dēadum | dēadum |
| Instrumental | dēadum | dēadum | dēadum |
Declension of dēad — Weak
Derived terms
Related terms
- dēaþ (“death”)
Descendants
See also
- sweltan (“to die”)
Old Irish
Alternative forms
Etymology
From Proto-Celtic *dīwedom, verbal noun of *dīwedeti (“to stop”) (whence Welsh diwedd (“end, ending”)).
Pronunciation
Noun
dead n (genitive deïd, no plural)
Declension
| Neuter o-stem | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | Dual | Plural | |
| Nominative | deadN | — | — |
| Vocative | deadN | — | — |
| Accusative | deadN | — | — |
| Genitive | deïdL | — | — |
| Dative | dïudL, deüd | — | — |
Initial mutations of a following adjective:
| |||
Derived terms
Related terms
Descendants
- Irish: diaidh
- ⇒ Middle Irish: co dead (“forever”, literally “to the end”)
- Irish: go deo
- Scottish Gaelic: dèidh
- Manx: jei
Mutation
| Old Irish mutation | ||
|---|---|---|
| Radical | Lenition | Nasalization |
| dead | dead pronounced with /ð(ʲ)-/ |
ndead |
| Note: Some of these forms may be hypothetical. Not every possible mutated form of every word actually occurs. | ||
Further reading
- G. Toner, M. Ní Mhaonaigh, S. Arbuthnot, D. Wodtko, M.-L. Theuerkauf, editors (2019), “dead”, in eDIL: Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language
- Matasović, Ranko (2009) “dī-wedo-”, in Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Celtic (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 9), Leiden: Brill, →ISBN, page 100
Volapük
Etymology
Borrowed from English dead or death (with the "th" changed to "d").
Pronunciation
Noun
dead (nominative plural deads)
Declension
declension of dead