DEAD


Meaning of DEAD in English

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.

Longman DOCE5 Extras English vocabulary.      Дополнительный английский словарь Longman DOCE5.