dead – English adjective declension

Adjective: dead

Comparison Forms

Synthetic

Comparative	deader
Superlative	deadest

Perifrastic

Sample Sentences

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.
Lily was pronounced dead at the scene.
A storekeeper downtown was shot dead last evening.
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. [1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:]
Was it possible to exist upon a dead world? [1913, Arthur Conan Doyle, “(please specify the page)”, in The Poison Belt […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:]
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. [1600, William Shakespeare, As You Like It, act III, scene 3:]
“Finished the last one at three this morning, apart from bits and bobs and poppers. Quite frankly, I'm dead!” [1970, Richard Carpenter, Catweazle, Harmondsworth: Puffin Books, page 124:]
He is dead to me.
I didn't have it in myself to go with grace
And you're the hero flying around, saving face
And if I'm dead to you, why are you at the wake? [2020 July 24, Taylor Swift, “My Tears Ricochet”, in Folklore:]
"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. [2009, Noel Hynd, Midnight in Madrid:]
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. [1969 March 31, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five […] (A Seymour Lawrence Book), New York, N.Y.: Delacorte Press, →OCLC, page 65:]
dead time
dead fields
The auditorium opens and the seats fill. As ever, there's a brief, grey dead time while Wheeler waits for all the machinery of the performance to spin up. The anxious feeling is stronger than usual today. It grips him, an uncharacteristic urge to run away. Sure, he thinks. I could just junk my career, right now. Pack it in and make for the stage door. Maybe the taxi'll still be there. [2019 April 10, qntm, “CASE HATE RED”, in There Is No Antimemetics Division, →ISBN, page 136:]
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. [1905, Lord Dunsany [i.e., Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany], The Gods of Pegāna, London: [Charles] Elkin Mathews, […], →OCLC, page 40:]
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. [1984, William Gibson, chapter 1, in Neuromancer (Sprawl; book 1), New York, N.Y.: Ace Books, →ISBN, page 3:]
Joker: Everything cuts out after that. No comm traffic at all. Just goes dead. There's nothing. [2008, BioWare, Mass Effect, Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Normandy SR-1:]
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. [1984, Winston Smock, Technical Writing for Beginners, page 148:]
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. [2017, Zhaomo Yang, Brian Johannesmeyer, Dead Store Elimination (Still) Considered Harmful:]
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.
Lmao I’m dead this was me to my fiancé since I found out in the car and my son was in the back seat 😭 [2023 March 3, ihatethis6666666, “I am dead ☠️”, in Reddit, r/vanderpumprules:]
[2023 May 31, Rod-kun, “Lmao I'm dead 🤣”, in Reddit, r/DrStone, archived from the original on 26 Jul 2024:]
[2022 December 7, Stealingmemesunlucky, “I'm dead 💀💀”, in Reddit, r/TikTokCringe, archived from the original on 26 Jul 2024:]
a dead floor
You breathe these dead news in as dead an ear. [c. 1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Iohn”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene vii]:]
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. [1839, William Jenks, The Comprehensive Commentary on the Holy Bible: Acts-Revelation, page 361:]
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." [1849, Robert Haldane, Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans, page 255:]
[…] syllable is dead, the tone will depend on whether the vowel is short or long. [2011, Russ Crowley, Learning Thai, Your Great Adventure, page 28:]

Adjectives inflected like dead

sallow, smooth, slight, sleigh, sordid, somber, shweet, shrill, shrewd, yellow, yaller, hard knock, DRY, Greek, cut short, unquiet, unclean, indiscreet, chipper, straicht, etc. (List truncated at 20 adjectives)

Etymology

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 and Norwegian Bokmål død, Norwegian Nynorsk daud, Swedish död. See: Dutch Adjectives 'dood', German Adjectives 'tot', Swedish Adjectives 'död'.

Verbs referencing "dead"

German Adjectives tot, Dutch Adjectives dood.