Dead

How to spell dead

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce dead

What does dead mean?

1. adjectiveNo longer alive, or no longer functioning.
2. adverbCompletely, exactly, or absolutely; used to intensify.

Dead in a sentence

• adjective

  The engine was completely dead when she turned the key.

• adverb

  The parcel arrived dead on time at nine o'clock.

• adjective

  The plant had been dead for weeks before anyone noticed.

• adverb

  After the long shift she was dead tired by midnight.

Where does dead come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word descends directly from the Old English 'dead', meaning 'having ceased to live', with no foreign borrowing involved at all. It traces back to the Proto-Germanic form *daudaz, which began life as a past participle of the verb that gave us 'die', so the literal force was 'one who has died'. The same ancient root surfaces in the German 'tot', the Dutch 'dood', and the Old Norse 'daudr', showing how widely it spread across the Germanic family. Over the centuries the meaning broadened far beyond living things, so we now speak of a dead battery, a dead phone line, or a dead silence. The spelling keeps the old '-ead' cluster that once matched the pronunciation more closely, which is why it now rhymes with 'red' rather than with 'bead', a leftover that catches people out.

How the word is built

• dead (single Old English root; from Germanic *daudaz, the past participle of the verb meaning 'to die')