dead
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: enpr: dĕd
ipa: /dɛd/
rhymes: -ɛd
ipa: /diːd/
Forms: form: deader
form: deadest
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.
Senses: examples: text: All of my grandparents are dead.
text: Have respect for the dead.
text: The villagers are mourning their dead.
text: The dead are always with us, in our hearts.
text: raise the dead
text: wake the dead
text: 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.
glosses: No longer living; deceased. (Also used as a noun.)
examples: text: a dead planet
text: 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.
ref: 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:
text: Was it possible to exist upon a dead world?
ref: 1913, Arthur Conan Doyle, “(please specify the page)”, in The Poison Belt […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:
glosses: Devoid of living things; barren.
examples: text: 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.
ref: 1600, William Shakespeare, As You Like It, act III, scene 3:
glosses: Figuratively, not alive; lacking life.
examples: text: He is dead to me.
text: I didn't have it in myself to go with grace
And you're the hero flying around, saving face
And if I'm dead to you, why are you at the wake?
ref: 2020 July 24, Taylor Swift, “My Tears Ricochet”, in Folklore:
glosses: So hated or offensive as to be absolutely shunned, ignored, or ostracized.
raw_tags: of another person
examples: text: "You come back here this instant! Oh, you're dead, mister!"
text: You're dead. A million and one thoughts pounded her at once. But one overpowered all the others. This time you're dead.
ref: 2009, Noel Hynd, Midnight in Madrid:
glosses: Doomed; marked for death; as good as dead (literally or as a hyperbole).
examples: text: She stood with dead face and limp arms, unresponsive to my plea.
glosses: Without emotion; impassive.
examples: text: the dead load on the floor
text: a dead lift
glosses: Stationary; static; immobile or immovable.
examples: text: dead air
text: a dead glass of soda.
text: He stopped, took a swig of the dead champagne. It was like 7-Up.
ref: 1969 March 31, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five […] (A Seymour Lawrence Book), New York, N.Y.: Delacorte Press, →OCLC, page 65:
glosses: Without interest to one of the senses; dull; flat.
examples: text: dead time
text: dead fields
text: The auditorium opens and the seats fill. As ever, there's a brief, grey dead time while Wheeler waits for all the machinery of the performance to spin up. The anxious feeling is stronger than usual today. It grips him, an uncharacteristic urge to run away. Sure, he thinks. I could just junk my career, right now. Pack it in and make for the stage door. Maybe the taxi'll still be there.
ref: 2019 April 10, qntm, “CASE HATE RED”, in There Is No Antimemetics Division, →ISBN, page 136:
glosses: Unproductive; fallow.
examples: text: 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.
ref: 1905, Lord Dunsany [i.e., Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany], The Gods of Pegāna, London: [Charles] Elkin Mathews, […], →OCLC, page 40:
glosses: Past, bygone, vanished.
examples: text: For a Friday night, it's really dead in this restaurant.
antonyms: alive
bustling#Adjective
busy
crowded#Adjective
hopping#Adjective
lively
noisy
glosses: Lacking usual activity; unexpectedly quiet or empty of people.
raw_tags: of a place
examples: text: OK, the circuit's dead. Go ahead and cut the wire.
text: Now that the motor's dead you can reach in and extract the spark plugs.
text: The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
ref: 1984, William Gibson, chapter 1, in Neuromancer (Sprawl; book 1), New York, N.Y.: Ace Books, →ISBN, page 3:
text: Joker: Everything cuts out after that. No comm traffic at all. Just goes dead. There's nothing.
ref: 2008, BioWare, Mass Effect, Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Normandy SR-1:
qualifier: device; or electrical circuit; device; or electrical circuit
glosses: Completely inactive; currently without power; without a signal; not live.
raw_tags: of a machine
glosses: Unable to emit power, being discharged (flat) or faulty.
raw_tags: of a battery
examples: text: That monitor is dead; don’t bother hooking it up.
glosses: Broken or inoperable.
examples: text: There are several dead laws still on the books regulating where horses may be hitched.
text: Is this beer glass dead?
text: No mark of any kind should ever be made on a dead manuscript.
ref: 1984, Winston Smock, Technical Writing for Beginners, page 148:
text: 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.
ref: 2017, Zhaomo Yang, Brian Johannesmeyer, Dead Store Elimination (Still) Considered Harmful:
glosses: No longer used or required.
examples: text: the dead spindle of a lathe
text: A dead axle, also called a lazy axle, is not part of the drivetrain, but is instead free-rotating.
topics: engineering
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
glosses: Intentionally designed so as not to impart motion or power.
examples: text: Once the ball crosses the foul line, it's dead.
topics: hobbies
lifestyle
sports
glosses: Not in play.
topics: golf
hobbies
lifestyle
sports
glosses: Lying so near the hole that the player is certain to hole it in the next stroke.
raw_tags: of a golf ball
topics: ball-games
baseball
games
hobbies
lifestyle
sports
glosses: Tagged out.
examples: text: dead stop
text: dead sleep
text: dead giveaway
text: dead silence
glosses: Full and complete (usually applied to nouns involving lack of motion, sound, activity, or other signs of life).
examples: text: dead center
text: dead aim
text: a dead eye
text: a dead level
glosses: Exact; on the dot.
examples: text: After sitting on my hands for a while, my arms became dead.
glosses: Experiencing pins and needles (paresthesia).
examples: text: Lmao I’m dead this was me to my fiancé since I found out in the car and my son was in the back seat 😭
ref: 2023 March 3, ihatethis6666666, “I am dead ☠️”, in Reddit, r/vanderpumprules:
ref: 2023 May 31, Rod-kun, “Lmao I'm dead 🤣”, in Reddit, r/DrStone, archived from the original on 26 Jul 2024:
synonyms: RIP
mul:💀
crying
LMAO
ROFL
mul:😭
glosses: Expresses an emotional reaction associated with hyperbolic senses of die:
Dying of laughter.
raw_tags: as a standalone word
with 💀
examples: ref: 2022 December 7, Stealingmemesunlucky, “I'm dead 💀💀”, in Reddit, r/TikTokCringe, archived from the original on 26 Jul 2024:
synonyms: RIP
mul:💀
glosses: Expresses an emotional reaction associated with hyperbolic senses of die:
Expresses shock, second-hand embarrassment, etc.
raw_tags: as a standalone word
with 💀
examples: text: a dead floor
qualifier: acoustics
glosses: Constructed so as not to reflect or transmit sound; soundless; anechoic.
examples: text: You breathe these dead news in as dead an ear.
ref: 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[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene vii]:
glosses: Bringing death; deadly.
examples: text: A person who is banished or who becomes a monk is civilly dead.
topics: law
glosses: Cut off from the rights of a citizen; deprived of the power of enjoying the rights of property.
examples: text: 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.
ref: 1839, William Jenks, The Comprehensive Commentary on the Holy Bible: Acts-Revelation, page 361:
text: 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."
ref: 1849, Robert Haldane, Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans, page 255:
topics: lifestyle
religion
glosses: Indifferent to; having no obligation toward; no longer subject to or ruled by (sin, guilt, pleasure, etc).
raw_tags: with "to"
examples: text: […] syllable is dead, the tone will depend on whether the vowel is short or long.
ref: 2011, Russ Crowley, Learning Thai, Your Great Adventure, page 28:
topics: human-sciences
linguistics
sciences
antonyms: live
glosses: Of a syllable in languages such as Thai and Burmese: ending abruptly.
Synonyms: word: asleep
word: at rest
word: cadaverous
word: clay-cold
word: deceased
word: resting
word: decomposed
word: defunct
word: departed
word: expired
word: extinct
word: fey
word: gone
word: good
word: inanimate
word: inert
word: kaput
word: late
word: lifeless
word: living impaired
word: low
word: no longer with us
word: no more
word: perished
word: reposing
word: six feet deep
word: six feet under
word: stiff
word: wasted
word: whilom
word: with God
Related terms: word: (to be) at peace
word: (to be) at the end of the road
word: (to be) bereft of life
word: (to be) belly up
word: (to have) bitten the big one
word: (to have) bitten the dust
word: (to have) bought the farm
word: (to be) brown bread
word: (to have) ceased to be
word: (to be) checked out
word: (to be) dead and gone
word: (to be) dead as a dodo
word: (to be) dead as a doornail
word: (to be) dead as a doorknob
word: (to be) dead as a duck
word: (to be) dead as a haddock
word: (to be) dead as a hammer
word: (to be) dead as a herring
word: (to be) dead as a mackerel
word: (to be) dead as a nit
word: (to be) dead as a pickled herring
word: (to be) dead as a stump
word: (to be) dead as a turd
word: (to be) dead as a turd in a milk bucket
word: (to be) dead as dishwater
word: (to be) dead as mutton
word: (to be) dead as stone
word: (to be) dead as wood
word: (to be) deader than dead
word: (to be) deader than road kill
word: (to go) feet first
word: (to be) food for worms
word: (to be) gone away
word: (to have) gone on to one's reward
word: (to have) gone to be with Jesus
word: (to have) gone to heaven
word: (to have) gone to one's final resting place
word: (to have) gone to paradise
word: (to have) gone to sing with the angels
word: (to have) gone to the Great Beyond
word: (to have) gone to the next life
word: (to be) in Abraham's bosom
word: (to be) in heaven
word: (to be) in paradise
word: (to be) in the grave
word: (to have) joined the choir invisible
word: (to have) kicked the bucket
word: (to have) met one's end
word: (to have) met one's maker
word: (to be) no longer with us
word: (to be) offed
word: (to be) passed away
word: (to have) passed on
word: (to be) pushing up the daisies
word: (to be) resting in peace
word: (to have) run down the curtain
word: (to have) seen the reaper
word: (to have) shuffled off this mortal coil
word: (to be) six feet under
word: (to) sleep with the fishes
word: (to have) snuffed it
word: (to be) stone dead
word: (to be) taking a dirt nap
word: (to be) washed up
word: (to be) with God
word: (to be) worm food
word: (to be) wasted
word: die
word: kill
word: death
word: cemetery