I. adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a dead language (= a language that is no longer spoken )
▪
She didn’t see the point of learning a dead language.
a dead leaf
▪
The ground beneath the tree was covered in dead leaves.
a living/dead cell
▪
Every living cell has a nucleus.
as good as dead/ruined/useless etc
▪
This carpet’s as good as ruined.
be a clear/dead giveaway (= make it very easy to guess something )
▪
He’d been smoking dope; his glazed eyes were a dead giveaway.
be in dead/deadly/complete earnest
▪
Although he smiled, Ashley knew he was in deadly earnest.
be presumed dead/innocent etc
▪
Their nephew was missing, presumed dead.
certify sb dead British English (= when a doctor says officially that a person is dead )
▪
The driver was certified dead at the scene.
come to/reach a dead end
▪
The negotiations have reached a dead end.
dead beat
▪
Come and sit down – you must be dead beat .
dead calm
▪
The seas were dead calm .
dead duck
▪
He admitted that the whole project was a dead duck.
dead end
▪
The negotiations have reached a dead end.
dead heat
dead letter
dead lucky informal (= very lucky )
▪
I was dead lucky to find a parking space right away.
dead reckoning
dead right informal (= completely correct, used for emphasis )
▪
You were dead right not to trust him.
dead ringer
▪
Dave’s a dead ringer for Paul McCartney.
dead set (= completely determined )
▪
The government’s dead set against the plan.
dead silence (= complete silence )
▪
There was a gasp from Peter and then a dead silence.
dead straight (= completely straight )
▪
The road was dead straight .
dead wood
dead
▪
There were dead flowers in a vase of green water.
dead/incredibly/terribly etc boring (= very boring )
drop dead date
feared dead
▪
Hundreds of people are feared dead in the ferry disaster.
in a (dead) faint
▪
She fell down in a faint.
in/at the dead of night literary (= in the middle of the night when it is quiet )
▪
He drove through the countryside in the dead of night.
leave sb for dead
▪
The girl had been attacked and left for dead.
playing dead
▪
Some snakes fool predators by playing dead .
shot dead
▪
A woman was shot dead in an attempted robbery.
stone dead
▪
The wrong music can kill a commercial stone dead.
stop dead/short/in your tracks (= stop walking suddenly )
▪
Sally saw the ambulance and stopped short.
straight/dead ahead (= straight in front )
▪
The river is eight miles away dead ahead.
the line went dead (= suddenly stopped working completely )
▪
There was a click, then the line went dead .
the phone goes/is dead (= the phone line stops working or is not working )
▪
Before he could reply, the phone suddenly went dead.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
already
▪
Among genres long since completed and inpart already dead , the novel is the only developing genre.
▪
On the contrary, if that is where it has to be read, the symbol is already dead .
▪
As far as we can tell all other compartments are flooded, which means that anyone behind those doors is already dead .
▪
Eight years after the mill closed, hundreds were already dead .
▪
There is no doubt that the ventilator may be turned off when in fact, the patient is already dead .
▪
She imagines killing him, but when she finds him he is already dead , his heart having given away.
▪
Beside her lay the body of the boy Francis Joseph Hegarty, who was already dead .
▪
The red spruce decline was continuing though it was statistically leveling off, since most of the spruce were already dead .
long
▪
Happily, the urge to commit suicide was itself long dead , buried beneath her need for revenge.
▪
The beetles are long dead now, but their larvae live on.
▪
Grandmama was long dead , and Morland Place now belonged to Uncle James.
▪
Next his child appeared, then others long dead .
▪
With Archbishop Courtenay long dead , there was no one from a greater world to consider.
▪
There was a dried-up riverbed not far away, and along its banks were the skeletons of trees long dead .
▪
Except that it was dead as well, long dead, and blind and rotting.
now
▪
Two of the Six were now dead , but there were always two men watching the King.
▪
Chief Inspector, you're talking as if everyone in that car is now dead .
▪
From the text it is not clear whether or not the father is still alive or is now dead .
▪
Beings who were now dead or dying, and who were lying in tangled, dreadfully mutilated heaps.
▪
He's now dead , but Wright and Round has ensured his music will live on by publishing the piece.
▪
Many are now dead , but their survivors want compensation and an apology.
▪
It was all centred on a man who was now dead , a man who had cast her aside long ago.
■ NOUN
animal
▪
Edinburgh ensures me that no wild animals are caught to replace dead animals.
▪
A dead body smells exactly the same as a dead animal .
▪
Perhaps if I looked further under the bed I would find small dead animals .
▪
The axles of the cart were greased with the fat of dead animals .
▪
But in the end, I learnt how to use the fat of dead animals to make a light.
▪
I learnt to make new clothes for myself from the skins of dead animals .
▪
They also witnessed various nauseating sights including a car piled high with dead animals .
▪
I gave them the meat of the dead animal , and they gave us more food and water.
body
▪
Her dead body wears the smile of accomplishment.
▪
A dead body smells exactly the same as a dead animal.
▪
My sister's dead body was carried slowly out of the house and through the village, followed by all of us.
▪
A dead body is liable to do that.
▪
The tide was setting in and the thing came nearer and nearer until she knew it was a dead body .
▪
Royal Humane Society, founded in 1774 for the rescue of persons from drowning, and the recovery of dead bodies .
▪
Because often their parents would make them go and kiss the dead body .
end
▪
Like the precise astronomical observations of the Maya, these technical achievements proved to be a dead end .
▪
This was a dead end for me.
▪
It's a dead end isn't it.
▪
But it is at a dead end now.
▪
A sublime, monumental dead end , that has produced some brilliant sado-masochist poetry from band and critic alike.
▪
He thinks they have reached an evolutionary dead end .
▪
And being a dead end , the alley led to nowhere else.
▪
But essentially I was moving away from dead ends more than being drawn toward children.
hand
▪
His dead hand he arranged, in a careful imitation of life, on his knee.
▪
Then there was Marta from Spartanburg, who was fleeing the dead hand of middle-class rectitude.
▪
It isn't about the dead hand of the past, the unsettled guilt-edged accounts of history returning to haunt the present.
▪
The core of the neoliberal argument is the need to free enterprise and initiative from the dead hand of the state.
▪
Such a move would reimpose the dead hand of state control and political interference.
▪
The main problem is the dead hand of local authorities, which keep tens of thousands of properties empty.
▪
State legislatures and Congress are no longer gripped as they once were by the dead hand of privilege.
▪
It was a dead hand , waving a tiny, posthumous good-bye.
heat
▪
The trucks bound across the finish in almost a dead heat -- but it is a bad race for both.
▪
We play for about 40 minutes to a dead heat at game point.
▪
If you look merely at voting margins, there is a dead heat .
▪
Phil Gramm finished in a dead heat with front-runner Bob Dole.
▪
Last year the Florida race was, in effect, a dead heat .
▪
Among non-religious-right voters, the race for governor was a dead heat .
leave
▪
Gullies often become blocked by dead leaves and small stones which fall through the grating.
▪
It looks like a pile of dead leaves in there.
▪
The other nine songs on the album however, rustle past your ears like dead leaves .
▪
He played an almost extinct worm crawling through dead leaves .
▪
Are there any dead leaves on the ground which will tell us the kind of leaf which will soon clothe the tree?
▪
As her mouth opened to gasp her shock it filled with snow and dead leaves .
▪
Do they prefer fresh leaves or dead leaves?
▪
My face was on dead leaves and dried grass and pieces of twig.
letter
▪
Theoretical reasoning is a dead letter to the child unless it is closely anchored to practical issues.
▪
But these dead letters troubled him, physically even, because they were only beginnings.
▪
I take messages and leave them in a dead letter box.
▪
The fact that the postwar treaty had been a dead letter for many years did not worry either party.
man
▪
I recall... the shocking distension and protrusion of the eyeballs of dead men and dead horses.
▪
But dead men paid no ransoms.
▪
I think they did it glumly, without hope: as if they knew they were dead men .
▪
Not so to the young sons of the dead men .
▪
It was hinged on top and it swung back, and I caught the scent of the dead man in the bathtub.
people
▪
In my dreams, memories of dead People rise up.
▪
Accusations of election fraud, from ballots cast for dead people to double-voting, are as old as democracy itself.
▪
Sometimes he wondered how many dead people there were to a cloud.
▪
B was running as close to unopposed as a ballot measure can be without the other side being run by dead people .
▪
How many dead people came down with the rain.
▪
On the mantelpiece she displayed photographs of dead people , propped up in their coffins, looking glum.
▪
She recognised a few faces from Amelia's party, but most of the dead people were strangers.
▪
And, finally, what do dead people do all day long?
person
▪
They list the name of the dead person and the years they were born and died.
▪
Miss Diedra was now nothing more than a dead person who seemed, incidentally, to be alive.
▪
No dead persons to be buried not thrown in the swamps.
▪
The act of eating a dead person destroys the integrity of visible bodies.
▪
We may think we see the dead person walking down the street, or hear them calling our name.
▪
The cremation ritual was directed mainly at inducing the spirit of the dead person to go on to the afterworld.
▪
I grieved over one dead person and one dying person and I encouraged one to quit smoking.
▪
I put my hands over my eyes to shut out my fears: I'd never seen a dead person before.
woman
▪
When I looked at the dead woman , instead of feeling sorry for her, I envied her.
▪
Quickly the two apply a massive transfusion of blood which gradually brings back to the dead woman some manifestations of life.
▪
She wouldn't be seeing any dead women getting out of their rocking chairs.
▪
For a long while after that first day, I could not live with the dead woman and her possessions.
▪
It emerged after the trial that the dead woman was the daughter of one of Britain's top psychiatrists.
▪
Maybe the dead woman had brought on the darkness in retaliation for my lack of respect.
wood
▪
Cut out the dead wood so that the young new wood can grow and develop.
▪
Check for dead wood by scratching the bark with your fingernail.
▪
Basically we looked at dead wood !
▪
And the potential for catastrophic wildfires is very high because of so much dead wood on the forest floor.
▪
He was working in a thicket of briar, elder and dead wood from a fallen tree.
▪
In his frustration, Doug picked up a piece of dead wood and flung it as far as he could.
▪
There's definitely a case for decriminalising the removal of dead wood .
▪
These would originally have been topped with a fence of dead wood or a live hedge to keep the animals out.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
(as) dead as a dodo
▪
I wrote back, Paz said, I told him, Dada dead as dodo eat your hat.
▪
The campaign was as dead as a dodo .
(as) dead as a doornail
▪
If looks could kill, Dooley Barlowe would have dropped him right there, dead as a doornail .
▪
She looked dead as a doornail .
▪
There we were, messing around with his things, and all the time he was dead as a doornail in Paris.
a dead duck
▪
If he's not here on time, he's a dead duck.
▪
The news program was once considered a dead duck.
be a (dead) cert
▪
I knew my sons had been saying that of course Mum would cry - it was a dead cert !
▪
No, this was a dead cert .
▪
One candidate, the outgoing Taoiseach and the then leader of Fine Gael, was a cert .
be flogging a dead horse
▪
If something is carried on then it is flogging a dead horse or blind ambition.
▪
They seem to be flogging a dead horse.
be the (dead) spit of sb
brain dead
▪
What's the matter with you? Are you brain dead or something?
▪
As laid back as you can get without being declared clinically brain dead.
▪
But he was pronounced dead, you know the doctor came and said brain dead.
cut sb dead
▪
I saw Josie today - she must still be angry with me because she cut me dead.
▪
Where he used to cut them dead, he now helps them on with their coats.
dead-end job
drop dead
▪
McSherry dropped dead of a heart attack in the middle of a baseball game.
▪
One day he just dropped dead in the street.
▪
One of their neighbors just dropped dead on the tennis court.
▪
A few months ago, the seven-year-old son of one family we spoke to dropped dead.
▪
I would not care if I dropped dead tomorrow.
▪
If this fails to deter the enemy, the possum promptly drops dead.
▪
In a few minutes the poor beast dropped dead.
▪
It wasn't printed in the end because he'd just dropped dead the day before, in Rochdale Road.
▪
Livestock are dropping dead in the fields.
▪
She dropped dead; her very flesh had melted away.
▪
They tried to beg, but everyone else was hungry, and they would drop dead in the streets.
give sb up for dead/lost etc
▪
After much searching, the village people gave Kay up for dead.
▪
Gray had been missing for over a year, and his wife was ready to give him up for dead.
▪
It is as if he gave them up for dead when they left Shiloh.
▪
On the thirteenth day, Kasturbai knelt before a sacred plant and prayed; she had given him up for lost.
stop/halt (dead) in your tracks
▪
A dreadful thought struck Jean, and she stopped in her tracks , right in the middle of the pavement.
▪
An hour later they were halted in their tracks by a cataract not marked on the map.
▪
Blue speaks her name, in a voice that seems strange to him, and she stops dead in her tracks .
▪
I stopped dead in my tracks , unsure of what to do next.
▪
It had been stopped in its tracks by the Railway Inspectorate and a public outcry.
▪
People stop in their tracks and stare.
▪
Petey stopped dead in his tracks at the question.
▪
The people had stopped in their tracks , women were making their children stand behind them.
strike sb dead
the quick and the dead
▪
The Ojibwa, Gary told me, make no crude distinction between the quick and the dead.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪
a dead moon of Jupiter
▪
a dead tree
▪
Following the shoot-out six people were dead and three were wounded.
▪
Her mother has been dead for ten years.
▪
In summer we get a few visitors, but most of the time this place is dead .
▪
Is the battery dead ?
▪
It's absolutely dead here when all the students go away for the summer vacation.
▪
It was autumn, and the path was covered in dead leaves.
▪
One of the gunshot victims was pronounced dead on arrival at City Hospital.
▪
She's no longer breathing - I think she's dead .
▪
The dead man's wife was questioned by police.
▪
the Dead Sea
▪
The bar is usually dead until around 10:00.
▪
The doctor told him that unless he stopped drinking he would be dead within a year.
▪
These flowers look dead - shall I throw them away?
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪
Following her hanging, a horse and cart set out from the Grassmarket carrying what was presumed to be her dead body.
▪
For Dorian, this was more terrible than the dead body in the room.
▪
It had been going on since 1963 and was continued despite the fact that dead trees proved to be very effective cover.
▪
She asked, then, if this meant her book was dead .
▪
So I got that net out of there myself and found a lot of dead fish, but at least no mammals.
▪
Then there was the business of the dead girl, Melanie something.
▪
They shot it dead and took the corpse to a government building in Edmonton.
II. adverb
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
drunk
▪
One young man is leaning back upon a seat, dead drunk .
▪
If you had been dead drunk , you couldn't have slept deeper.
flat
▪
The land was dead flat , divided into large ploughed fields almost devoid of trees.
good
▪
Some of the opposing teams are dead good .
▪
A dead good singer, but, alas, no different from the way he was before.
quiet
▪
It was as big as a settee but it was dead quiet .
▪
He could have been a preacher himsel Everything went dead quiet .
▪
For a minute everything went dead quiet and Henry began to panic.
▪
There are about 200 people in this room, and it just went dead quiet .
▪
All at once the car was dead quiet , because the engine had stalled out.
▪
Hundreds of people jammed into a room, all the phones ringing, and yet everything was dead quiet .
right
▪
No, you're dead right .
▪
Cold chills ran down my right leg, which is the surest way I have of knowing when something is dead right.
▪
That, in my opinion, is dead right .
serious
▪
The only analogy was St Trinian's, but this was dead serious .
▪
In Great Groups the engagement of the enemy is both dead serious and a lark.
▪
He was dead serious in class and was the one that passed the exams.
▪
They were dead serious about going to Mars and began working out the details.
▪
They were dead serious , his Mum and Dad, about moving.
straight
▪
I even resorted to going to a hairdresser who guaranteed that I'd emerge with dead straight hair.
▪
His favourite was in bright print patchwork, and he wore it dead straight , one inch above his eyebrows.
▪
They are dead straight and can be dowsed across country.
▪
You go straight forward in a dead straight line.
▪
He keeps going in a dead straight line.
▪
He takes a quick kick dead straight towards goal ... which shearer runs on to and scores.
▪
After running dead straight for about 160 metres, the Royal Road reaches the modern road from Heraklion.
▪
A peeled fine-grained stick, dead straight .
white
▪
Huge pools of eyes stared back at her from the dead white planes of the face.
▪
I had begun wearing deck shoes because the soles of my feet had turned dead white as a result of going barefoot.
▪
Miranda stayed in the car, her face dead white in the frame of the windscreen.
▪
His face was still that dead white colour.
▪
His flesh was dead white , greenish.
wrong
▪
Statements like these are dead wrong .
▪
But he was dead wrong in predicting that such harmonious relations would ever be.
▪
And you're always dead wrong .
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
(as) dead as a dodo
▪
I wrote back, Paz said, I told him, Dada dead as dodo eat your hat.
▪
The campaign was as dead as a dodo .
(as) dead as a doornail
▪
If looks could kill, Dooley Barlowe would have dropped him right there, dead as a doornail .
▪
She looked dead as a doornail .
▪
There we were, messing around with his things, and all the time he was dead as a doornail in Paris.
a dead duck
▪
If he's not here on time, he's a dead duck.
▪
The news program was once considered a dead duck.
be a (dead) cert
▪
I knew my sons had been saying that of course Mum would cry - it was a dead cert !
▪
No, this was a dead cert .
▪
One candidate, the outgoing Taoiseach and the then leader of Fine Gael, was a cert .
be flogging a dead horse
▪
If something is carried on then it is flogging a dead horse or blind ambition.
▪
They seem to be flogging a dead horse.
be the (dead) spit of sb
better Red than dead
brain dead
▪
What's the matter with you? Are you brain dead or something?
▪
As laid back as you can get without being declared clinically brain dead.
▪
But he was pronounced dead, you know the doctor came and said brain dead.
cut sb dead
▪
I saw Josie today - she must still be angry with me because she cut me dead.
▪
Where he used to cut them dead, he now helps them on with their coats.
dead-end job
drop dead
▪
McSherry dropped dead of a heart attack in the middle of a baseball game.
▪
One day he just dropped dead in the street.
▪
One of their neighbors just dropped dead on the tennis court.
▪
A few months ago, the seven-year-old son of one family we spoke to dropped dead.
▪
I would not care if I dropped dead tomorrow.
▪
If this fails to deter the enemy, the possum promptly drops dead.
▪
In a few minutes the poor beast dropped dead.
▪
It wasn't printed in the end because he'd just dropped dead the day before, in Rochdale Road.
▪
Livestock are dropping dead in the fields.
▪
She dropped dead; her very flesh had melted away.
▪
They tried to beg, but everyone else was hungry, and they would drop dead in the streets.
give sb up for dead/lost etc
▪
After much searching, the village people gave Kay up for dead.
▪
Gray had been missing for over a year, and his wife was ready to give him up for dead.
▪
It is as if he gave them up for dead when they left Shiloh.
▪
On the thirteenth day, Kasturbai knelt before a sacred plant and prayed; she had given him up for lost.
kill sth stone dead
▪
Indeed, as expectations can kill the magic stone dead, such occasions are often evoked by going somewhere completely new.
stop/halt (dead) in your tracks
▪
A dreadful thought struck Jean, and she stopped in her tracks , right in the middle of the pavement.
▪
An hour later they were halted in their tracks by a cataract not marked on the map.
▪
Blue speaks her name, in a voice that seems strange to him, and she stops dead in her tracks .
▪
I stopped dead in my tracks , unsure of what to do next.
▪
It had been stopped in its tracks by the Railway Inspectorate and a public outcry.
▪
People stop in their tracks and stare.
▪
Petey stopped dead in his tracks at the question.
▪
The people had stopped in their tracks , women were making their children stand behind them.
strike sb dead
the quick and the dead
▪
The Ojibwa, Gary told me, make no crude distinction between the quick and the dead.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪
It stopped me dead in my tracks.
▪
It was as big as a settee but it was dead quiet.
▪
Stef, Hugo pointed out, was dead set against junk food.
▪
The women in prison who had kids were always dead upset.
III. noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
long
▪
Under the best case, by the time the proper medicine is prescribed, this patient will be long dead .
▪
Everybody from the Round Table is long dead .
▪
From a distance the braces look to be giant bleached drumsticks of a creature long dead .
■ NOUN
stone
▪
He could tell the highwayman was stone dead .
■ VERB
find
▪
Tuesday: Authorities find Schneider dead inside the vehicle early this morning.
leave
▪
The idleness and overcrowding led to rioting in four state prisons in 1985 that left an inmate dead .
shoot
▪
And although the Buddhist monk who shot him dead was motivated primarily by personal grievances, this chauvinism played a part.
▪
How about getting shot dead by her uncle, Ethan?
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪
A light came wobbling up the Banbury Road, Oxford, in the dead of night.
▪
Among the dead were two of the train drivers.
▪
It was to keep the dead where they belong, in their grave.
▪
Makes the rotten dead sit right up.
▪
Men on board pulled the wounded and the mangled bodies of the dead from beneath collapsed debris.
▪
My house feels solid and safe and orderly; hyacinths and narcissus bloom indoors here even in the dead of winter.
▪
The dead were covered by low mounds encircled with stones.