Etimology
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.
adjective
dead (not generally comparable, comparative deader, superlative deadest)
(usually not comparable) No longer living; (usually only when referring to people) deceased. (Also used as a noun.)
(usually not comparable) Devoid of living things; barren.
(hyperbolic) Figuratively, not alive; lacking life.
(of another person) So hated or offensive as to be absolutely shunned, ignored or ostracized.
Doomed; marked for death; as good as dead (literally or as a hyperbole).
Without emotion; impassive.
Stationary; static; immobile or immovable.
Without interest to one of the senses; dull; flat.
Unproductive; fallow.
Past, bygone, vanished.
(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.
(of a battery) Unable to emit power, being discharged (flat) or faulty.
(not comparable) Broken or inoperable.
(not comparable) No longer used or required.
(engineering) Intentionally designed so as not to impart motion or power.
(not comparable, sports) Not in play.
(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).
(not comparable) Exact; on the dot.
Experiencing pins and needles (paresthesia).
(acoustics) Constructed so as not to reflect or transmit sound; soundless; anechoic.
(obsolete) Bringing death; deadly.
(law) Cut off from the rights of a citizen; deprived of the power of enjoying the rights of property.
(rare, especially religion, often with "to") Indifferent to; having no obligation toward; no longer subject to or ruled by (sin, guilt, pleasure, etc).
(linguistics) Of a syllable in languages such as Thai and Burmese: ending abruptly.
Examples
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
a dead planet
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.
Was it possible to exist upon a dead world?
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.
He is dead to me.
"You come back here this instant! Oh, you're dead, mister!"
You're dead. A million and one thoughts pounded her at once. But one overpowered all the others. This time you're dead.
She stood with dead face and limp arms, unresponsive to my plea.
the dead load on the floor
a dead lift
dead air
a dead glass of soda.
He stopped, took a swig of the dead champagne. It was like 7-Up.
dead time
dead fields
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.
Antonyms: alive, bustling, busy, crowded, hopping, lively, noisy
For a Friday night, it's really dead in this restaurant.
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.
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
Joker: Everything cuts out after that. No comm traffic at all. Just goes dead. There's nothing.
That monitor is dead; don’t bother hooking it up.
There are several dead laws still on the books regulating where horses may be hitched.
Is this beer glass dead?
No mark of any kind should ever be made on a dead manuscript.
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.
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.
Once the ball crosses the foul line, it's dead.
dead stop
dead sleep
dead giveaway
dead silence
dead center
dead aim
a dead eye
a dead level
After sitting on my hands for a while, my arms became dead.
a dead floor
You breathe these dead news in as dead an ear.
A person who is banished or who becomes a monk is civilly dead.
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.
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."
Antonym: live
[…] syllable is dead, the tone will depend on whether the vowel is short or long.
Related words
synonyms
See also Thesaurus:dead
antonyms
alive
live
living
adverb
dead (not comparable)
(degree, informal, colloquial) Exactly.
(degree, informal, colloquial) Very, absolutely, extremely.
Suddenly and completely.
(informal) As if dead.
Examples
dead right; dead level; dead flat; dead straight; dead left
He hit the target dead in the centre.
Independent tests later confirmed [the figures] to be accurate, with Car & Driver seeing 159mph , 0.60 in five seconds dead, and an amazingly high 0.97g.
And because the tunnel is dead straight, it's perfect for reaching high speeds.
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
I knew once a Scotch sailmaker who was certain, dead sure, there were people in Mars.
He stopped dead.
dead tired; dead quiet; dead asleep; dead pale; dead cold; dead still
I was tired of reading, and dead sleepy.
noun
dead (uncountable)
(often with "the") Time when coldness, darkness, or stillness is most intense.
(with "the") Those (dead people) who have died.
Examples
The dead of night. The dead of winter.
Will the dead rise again?
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.
(transitive) To make dead; to deaden; to deprive of life, force, or vigour.
(UK, US, transitive, slang) To kill.
Examples
“What a man should do, when finds his natural impotency dead him in spiritual works”
Heaven's stern decree, / With many an ill, hath numb'd and deaded me.
I shoulda deaded it from genesis instead of hittin' the Guinnesses
This dude at the club was trying to kill us so I deaded him, and then I had to collect from Spice.
“What, you was just gonna dead him because if that's the case then why the fuck we getting the money?” Sha asked annoyed.
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.”
Related words
related terms
deaden
deadliness
deadly
deadness
death
undead