Meaning of dead in English

dead

adjective

/ded/ us

/ded/

dead adjective (NOT LIVING)

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not now living:

She's been dead for 20 years now.

dead on arrival The motorcyclist was dead on arrival at the hospital.

be shot dead He was shot dead (= killed by shooting) outside his home.

C2 mainly UK

If a part of your body is dead, you cannot feel it:

I've been sitting with my legs crossed for so long, my right leg has gone dead.

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The president has sent a message of sympathy to the relatives of the dead soldiers.
In the autumn I rake up the dead leaves.
Forensic examination revealed a large quantity of poison in the dead man's stomach.
An ambulance crew was called to his home, but he was dead by the time they arrived.
The horse lay motionless on the ground, as if dead.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Death and dying

bereave
bite
bleed out
buy the farm idiom
cadaveric
death toll
depart this life idiom
fatality
ghost
macabre
push
remains
snuff
starvation
strike someone down
suffocation
terminally
those whom the gods love die young idiom
toll
watery

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You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

Unable to feel anything

dead adjective (NOT IN USE)

If glasses and bottles that were previously full are dead, they are now empty.

In some sports, if a ball is dead, it is outside the area of play:

Officials ruled the ball dead.

See also

dead ball

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Empty

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General terms used in ball sports

dead adjective (BORING)

If a place is dead, it is too quiet and nothing interesting happens there:

The city centre is quite lively during the day, but it's totally dead at night.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Tedious and uninspiring

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dead adjective (EQUIPMENT)

If a piece of equipment is dead, it is not working:

a dead battery

go dead The phone suddenly went dead.

Thesaurus: synonyms, antonyms, and examples

broken

brokenThe microwave's broken.
deadThe phone's dead; there must be a problem with the line.
defunctThe TV's defunct!
bustUK You won't be able to watch the game, the TV's bust.
bustedUS Oh no, my laptop's busted.
out of orderThe coffee machine was out of order.

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SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Machines - not functioning

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dead adjective (TIRED)

informal

very tired:

I'm absolutely dead by the end of the day.

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If you try to do it all yourself you'll be completely dead.
She says she can't come out because she's too dead.
I can't dance any more, I'm dead.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Tired and making tired

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Idioms

be (as) dead as a/the dodo
be as dead as a doornail
be dead meat
be dead in the water
be dead on your feet
dead to rights
be dead to the world
dead man walking
dead men tell no tales
over my dead body

dead

adjective [ before noun ], adverb

/ded/ us

/ded/

complete(ly):

dead silence The conductor waited for dead silence before commencing the performance.

dead ahead The post office is dead (= straight) ahead.

Aim for the dead (= exact) centre of the target.

dead on time I always try to arrive dead (= exactly) on time.

UK informal

very:

dead easy The exam was dead easy.

I'm dead hungry.

"How was the film?" "It was dead good."

dead set against (doing) something (UK also dead against (doing) something)

to be completely opposed to something:

He's dead set against living in the city.

dead set on (doing) something

to be very determined to do or have something:

Martha's dead set on having a new bike.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Complete and whole

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Linguistics: very & extreme

dead

noun

/ded/ us

/ded/

the dead [ plural ]

dead people:

Three children were among the dead.

A ceasefire has been called to allow the survivors to bury their dead.

He believes that God will judge the living and the dead.

The dead are always with us in our memories.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Death and dying

bereave
bite
bleed out
buy the farm idiom
cadaveric
death toll
depart this life idiom
fatality
ghost
macabre
push
remains
snuff
starvation
strike someone down
suffocation
terminally
those whom the gods love die young idiom
toll
watery

See more results »

Idioms

come back from the dead

in the dead of night/winter

(Definition of dead from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

dead | American Dictionary

dead

adjective [ not gradable ]

/ded/

dead adjective [not gradable] (NOT LIVING)

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no longer living:

dead leaves

Local residents found the whale dead on the beach.

If a piece of machinery or equipment is dead, it is no longer working:

a dead battery

The phone suddenly went dead.

infml If you describe a place as dead, you mean there is not much activity there that interests you:

I love my hometown, but as a teenager I always found it dead.

dead adjective [not gradable] (COMPLETE)

complete or exact:

The conductor waited for dead silence before lifting his baton.

He aimed for the dead center of the target.

Idiom

(as) dead as a doornail

dead

adverb [ not gradable ]

/ded/

dead adverb [not gradable] (COMPLETELY)

completely or extremely:

After a hard day’s work, I was dead tired.

dead

noun

/ded/

dead noun (DEAD PEOPLE)

[ pl ]

people who are no longer living:

She did not know any of the names listed among the dead.

dead noun (DEEPEST PART)

[ U ]

the deepest or most extreme part of something

Idioms

dead of night

dead of winter

(Definition of dead from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

dead | Business English

dead

adjective

/ded/ us

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no longer existing, or no longer having success or making progress:

Some believe that employee loyalty to organizations is dead because lifetime employment is no longer possible.

The online service attracted far fewer customers than predicted and is practically dead, analysts said.

She saved a nearly dead $250 million deal to renovate the downtown area.

if a place is dead, nothing is happening there:

Taxi drivers reported that business was slow and the airport has been dead.

used to describe a machine or equipment that has stopped working:

go dead The phone line went dead.

dead in the water

having failed and very unlikely to have any success in the future:

Mr Winters said his plans for a management buyout were dead in the water.

(Definition of dead from the Cambridge Business English Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of dead

dead

He returns home and finds the burglar, dead from a heart attack, on the floor.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The result of this damage is that there are now dead processors scattered at random in the system.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

By then, over half the former division members were dead, and the average age of the 117 surviving members was seventy-three years.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

And third, the woman looks either dead or made of plastic which problematises her otherwise conventionally attractive appearance.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The presence of dead parasites may not confer an acquired immunity to re-infection.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The cytoplasm of the cells had lysosome-like granules containing dead granulosa cell debris at different stages of degradation.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Positions and heading angle from dead reckoning are redrawn on computer screen overlapped with a hand measured map.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Within a host, the proportion of the parasites that are dead is not related to the degree of multiple infection.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Half of this sediment can be expected to settle above the out-take (in the live storage) and half below the out-take (in dead storage).

From the Cambridge English Corpus

A hill with a hollow provides dead ground, and this could be a lurking place for natural or supernatural enemies.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Even (seemingly) unimportant enacted laws change the status quo policy and have greater utility than dead important bills.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

This can take measurements using fluorescence to establish the three microbe states: viable, dead or dormant.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Total number and the numbers of dormant, non-dormant, living and dead seeds significantly differed among the autumn, spring and summer samples.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The dormant, non-dormant, dead, living and total seed densities per m2 by centimetre of depth were significantly different among the nine populations tested.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The second improvement concerns the order in which we perform dead-variable elimination.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

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These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

What is the pronunciation of dead?

A2,C2,C2,B2,C1