What does dead mean?

What does dead mean?. The world's largest and most trusted free online dictionary: definitions, synonyms, word origins, example sentences, word games, and more.

What does dead mean? - The Free Dictionary

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[n] people who are no longer living(they buried the dead)[a] no longer having or seeming to have or expecting to have life(the nerve is dead a dead pallor he was marked as a dead man by the assassin)[r] quickly and without warning(he stopped suddenly)[n] a time when coldness (or some other

dead

dead - The Free Dictionary

[n] people who are no longer living
(they buried the dead)

[a] no longer having or seeming to have or expecting to have life
(the nerve is dead a dead pallor he was marked as a dead man by the assassin)

[r] quickly and without warning
(he stopped suddenly)

[n] a time when coldness (or some other quality associated with death) is intense
(the dead of winter)

[a] not showing characteristics of life especially the capacity to sustain life; no longer exerting force or having energy or heat
(Mars is a dead planet dead soil dead coals the fire is dead)

[r] completely and without qualification; used informally as intensifiers
(an absolutely magnificent painting a perfectly idiotic idea you're perfectly right utterly miserable you can be dead sure of my innocence was dead tired dead right)

[a] very tired
(was all in at the end of the day so beat I could flop down and go to sleep anywhere bushed after all that exercise I'm dead after that long trip)

[a] unerringly accurate
(a dead shot took dead aim)

[a] physically inactive
(Crater Lake is in the crater of a dead volcano of the Cascade Range)

[a] (followed by `to') not showing human feeling or sensitivity; unresponsive
(passersby were dead to our plea for help numb to the cries for mercy)

[a] devoid of physical sensation; numb
(his gums were dead from the novocain she felt no discomfort as the dentist drilled her deadened tooth a public desensitized by continuous television coverage of atrocities)

[a] lacking acoustic resonance
(dead sounds characteristic of some compact discs the dead wall surfaces of a recording studio)

[a] not yielding a return
(dead capital idle funds)

[a] not circulating or flowing
(dead air dead water stagnant water)

[a] not surviving in active use
(Latin is a dead language)

[a] lacking resilience or bounce
(a dead tennis ball)

[a] out of use or operation because of a fault or breakdown
(a dead telephone line the motor is dead)

[a] no longer having force or relevance
(a dead issue)

[a] complete
(came to a dead stop utter seriousness)

[a] drained of electric charge; discharged
(a dead battery left the lights on and came back to find the battery drained)

[a] devoid of activity
(this is a dead town; nothing ever happens here)

Other vocabulary

d, d and c, d region, d'oyly carte, d-day, d-layer, d. h. lawrence, d. w. griffith, d.a., d.c., d.o.a., d.p.r.k., da, da gamma, da vinci, da'wah, dab, daba, dabble, dabbled, dabbler, dabbling duck, dabchick, daboecia, daboecia cantabrica, dacca, dace, dacelo, dacelo gigas, dacha, e, e layer, e region, e'en, e'er, e-bomb, e-commerce, e-mail, e-mycin, e. a. von willebrand, e. b. white, e. coli, e. e. cummings, e. g. marshall, e. h. harriman, e. h. weber, e. l. doctorow, e. o. lawrence, e. o. wilson, e. t. a. hoffmann, e. t. s. walton, e. w. morley, e.g., e.s.p., ea, each, each week, each year, eacles, eacles imperialis

Dictionary

A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically (or by consonantal root for Semitic languages or radical and stroke for ideographic languages), which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies, pronunciations, translation, etc. It is a lexicographical reference that shows inter-relationships among the data.

A broad distinction is made between general and specialized dictionaries. Specialized dictionaries include words in specialist fields, rather than a complete range of words in the language. Lexical items that describe concepts in specific fields are usually called terms instead of words, although there is no consensus whether lexicology and terminology are two different fields of study. In theory, general dictionaries are supposed[citation needed] to be semasiological, mapping word to definition, while specialized dictionaries are supposed to be onomasiological, first identifying concepts and then establishing the terms used to designate them. In practice, the two approaches are used for both types. There are other types of dictionaries that do not fit neatly into the above distinction, for instance bilingual (translation) dictionaries, dictionaries of synonyms (thesauri), and rhyming dictionaries. The word dictionary (unqualified) is usually understood to refer to a general purpose monolingual dictionary.

There is also a contrast between prescriptive or descriptive dictionaries; the former reflect what is seen as correct use of the language while the latter reflect recorded actual use. Stylistic indications (e.g. "informal" or "vulgar") in many modern dictionaries are also considered by some to be less than objectively descriptive.

The first recorded dictionaries date back to Sumerian times around 2300 BCE, in the form of bilingual dictionaries, and the oldest surviving monolingual dictionaries are Chinese dictionaries c. 3rd century BCE. The first purely English alphabetical dictionary was A Table Alphabeticall, written in 1604, and monolingual dictionaries in other languages also began appearing in Europe at around this time. The systematic study of dictionaries as objects of scientific interest arose as a 20th-century enterprise, called lexicography, and largely initiated by Ladislav Zgusta. The birth of the new discipline was not without controversy, with the practical dictionary-makers being sometimes accused by others of having an "astonishing" lack of method and critical-self reflection.