dead-end

• deadend

• (adjective) IPA^(key): /ˈdɛdɛnd/
• (noun, verb) IPA^(key): /dɛdˈɛnd/

• Audio (General American):

  (file)

• Rhymes: (noun, verb) -ɛnd

dead-end (comparative more dead-end, superlative most dead-end)

1. Going nowhere; blocked.

   a dead-end street

   a dead-end job

   • 2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, →ISBN, page 124:

     [...] as it approached Platform 9 at Moorgate, the train, which ought to have been going at 15 miles an hour, was travelling at 35 m.p.h., and apparently accelerating. It smashed into the head wall of the 60-foot dead-end tunnel because, as we have seen, the Metropolitan's plans to extend the line south had come to nothing.

dead-end (third-person singular simple present dead-ends, present participle dead-ending, simple past and past participle dead-ended)

1. (US) To come to a dead-end.

   Watch out! The road dead-ends in 200 yards and there's nowhere to turn around!

2. (by extension) To come to nothing; to reach a hopeless situation.
   • 1986 February 1, Michael Bronski, “Mock Homage to Fassbinder's Life & Films”, in Gay Community News, volume 13, number 28, page 6:

     Dumas' tangle of unrequited, misplaced and dead-ended love

dead-end (plural dead-ends)

1. A road with no exit.

   We turned into the street and realised it was a dead-end.

2. (by extension, figuratively) A position that offers no hope of progress.

   Mary realised her relationship with Jim had hit a dead-end.

• dedenda