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Dead language   /dɛd lˈæŋgwədʒ/   Listen
adjective
Dead  adj.  
1.
Deprived of life; opposed to alive and living; reduced to that state of a being in which the organs of motion and life have irrevocably ceased to perform their functions; as, a dead tree; a dead man. "The queen, my lord, is dead." "The crew, all except himself, were dead of hunger." "Seek him with candle, bring him dead or living."
2.
Destitute of life; inanimate; as, dead matter.
3.
Resembling death in appearance or quality; without show of life; deathlike; as, a dead sleep.
4.
Still as death; motionless; inactive; useless; as, dead calm; a dead load or weight.
5.
So constructed as not to transmit sound; soundless; as, a dead floor.
6.
Unproductive; bringing no gain; unprofitable; as, dead capital; dead stock in trade.
7.
Lacking spirit; dull; lusterless; cheerless; as, dead eye; dead fire; dead color, etc.
8.
Monotonous or unvaried; as, a dead level or pain; a dead wall. "The ground is a dead flat."
9.
Sure as death; unerring; fixed; complete; as, a dead shot; a dead certainty. "I had them a dead bargain."
10.
Bringing death; deadly.
11.
Wanting in religious spirit and vitality; as, dead faith; dead works. "Dead in trespasses."
12.
(Paint.)
(a)
Flat; without gloss; said of painting which has been applied purposely to have this effect.
(b)
Not brilliant; not rich; thus, brown is a dead color, as compared with crimson.
13.
(Law) Cut off from the rights of a citizen; deprived of the power of enjoying the rights of property; as, one banished or becoming a monk is civilly dead.
14.
(Mach.) Not imparting motion or power; as, the dead spindle of a lathe, etc. See Spindle.
15.
(Elec.) Carrying no current, or producing no useful effect; said of a conductor in a dynamo or motor, also of a telegraph wire which has no instrument attached and, therefore, is not in use.
16.
Out of play; regarded as out of the game; said of a ball, a piece, or a player under certain conditions in cricket, baseball, checkers, and some other games. "(In golf), a ball is said to lie dead when it lies so near the hole that the player is certain to hole it in the next stroke."
Dead ahead (Naut.), directly ahead; said of a ship or any object, esp. of the wind when blowing from that point toward which a vessel would go.
Dead angle (Mil.), an angle or space which can not be seen or defended from behind the parapet.
Dead block, either of two wooden or iron blocks intended to serve instead of buffers at the end of a freight car.
Dead calm (Naut.), no wind at all.
Dead center, or Dead point (Mach.), either of two points in the orbit of a crank, at which the crank and connecting rod lie a straight line. It corresponds to the end of a stroke; as, A and B are dead centers of the crank mechanism in which the crank C drives, or is driven by, the lever L.
Dead color (Paint.), a color which has no gloss upon it.
Dead coloring (Oil paint.), the layer of colors, the preparation for what is to follow. In modern painting this is usually in monochrome.
Dead door (Shipbuilding), a storm shutter fitted to the outside of the quarter-gallery door.
Dead flat (Naut.), the widest or midship frame.
Dead freight (Mar. Law), a sum of money paid by a person who charters a whole vessel but fails to make out a full cargo. The payment is made for the unoccupied capacity.
Dead ground (Mining), the portion of a vein in which there is no ore.
Dead hand, a hand that can not alienate, as of a person civilly dead. "Serfs held in dead hand." See Mortmain.
Dead head (Naut.), a rough block of wood used as an anchor buoy.
Dead heat, a heat or course between two or more race horses, boats, etc., in which they come out exactly equal, so that neither wins.
Dead horse, an expression applied to a debt for wages paid in advance. (Law)
Dead language, a language which is no longer spoken or in common use by a people, and is known only in writings, as the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin.
Dead letter.
(a)
A letter which, after lying for a certain fixed time uncalled for at the post office to which it was directed, is then sent to the general post office to be opened.
(b)
That which has lost its force or authority; as, the law has become a dead letter.
Dead-letter office, a department of the general post office where dead letters are examined and disposed of.
Dead level, a term applied to a flat country.
Dead lift,
(a)
a direct lift, without assistance from mechanical advantage, as from levers, pulleys, etc.; hence, an extreme emergency. "(As we say) at a dead lift."
(b)
(Weighlifting) The lifting of a weight from the ground, without raising it to the shoulders.
Dead line (Mil.), a line drawn within or around a military prison, to cross which involves for a prisoner the penalty of being instantly shot.
Dead load (Civil Engin.), a constant, motionless load, as the weight of a structure, in distinction from a moving load, as a train of cars, or a variable pressure, as of wind.
Dead march (Mus.), a piece of solemn music intended to be played as an accompaniment to a funeral procession.
Dead nettle (Bot.), a harmless plant with leaves like a nettle (Lamium album).
Dead oil (Chem.), the heavy oil obtained in the distillation of coal tar, and containing phenol, naphthalus, etc.
Dead plate (Mach.), a solid covering over a part of a fire grate, to prevent the entrance of air through that part.
Dead pledge, a mortgage. See Mortgage.
Dead point. (Mach.) See Dead center.
Dead reckoning (Naut.), the method of determining the place of a ship from a record kept of the courses sailed as given by compass, and the distance made on each course as found by log, with allowance for leeway, etc., without the aid of celestial observations.
Dead rise, the transverse upward curvature of a vessel's floor.
Dead rising, an elliptical line drawn on the sheer plan to determine the sweep of the floorheads throughout the ship's length.
Dead-Sea apple. See under Apple.
Dead set. See under Set.
Dead shot.
(a)
An unerring marksman.
(b)
A shot certain to be made.
Dead smooth, the finest cut made; said of files.
Dead wall (Arch.), a blank wall unbroken by windows or other openings.
Dead water (Naut.), the eddy water closing in under a ship's stern when sailing.
Dead weight.
(a)
A heavy or oppressive burden.
(b)
(Shipping) A ship's lading, when it consists of heavy goods; or, the heaviest part of a ship's cargo.
(c)
(Railroad) The weight of rolling stock, the live weight being the load.
Dead wind (Naut.), a wind directly ahead, or opposed to the ship's course.
To be dead, to die. (Obs.) "I deme thee, thou must algate be dead."
Synonyms: Inanimate; deceased; extinct. See Lifeless.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Dead language" Quotes from Famous Books



... a dead language, and a horde of shysters! I'm afraid of law in this land; we're too new and too far away from things. It puts too much power in too few hands. Heretofore we men up here have had recourse to our courage and our Colts, but we'll have ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... were, memoria technica, which could easily be remembered, and would recall the fuller expositions that had been based upon them. Shortly after the Buddha's time the Brahmins had their s[u]tras in Sanskrit, already a dead language. He purposely put his into the ordinary conversational idiom of the day, that is to say, into P[a]li. When the Buddha died these sayings were collected together by his disciples into what they call the Four Nik[a]yas, or "collections." ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... in the dead language that befitted one cut off from life, to whom Dutch was never aught but the unintelligible jargon of an unspiritual race, he was leaving his house on a bleak evening when one clapped him on the shoulder, and turning in amaze, he was still more mazed to find, for the first ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Versification in a dead language is an exotic, a far-fetched, costly, sickly imitation of that which elsewhere may be found in healthful and spontaneous perfection. The soils on which this rarity flourishes are in general as ill-suited to the production of vigorous native poetry as the flower-pots of a hot-house to ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... writers string intelligent words together in an unintelligent manner, and thereby give the reader an opportunity to read anything into them that his preconceived thoughts may dictate. Metaphysical gibberish is a rudimentary survival of the practise of reading to the people in a dead language. The doctors continue the plan by writing ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... learned! He seems to know, to know surprisingly well. He seems keenly versed in the law, able quickly to turn the tables upon their catch questions. But then it can't be the real article of learning, because He hasn't been in our established schools. He has no sheepskin in a dead language with our learned doctors' names learnedly ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... dead child, whose memory would never die out of her warm heart, and good Mr. Bond, who had always seemed to her so far above all other mortals—and Pat, too, who was, she thought, the impersonation of all that was beautiful and good; but the "breaking of the heart of ye" was a dead language to her, saving when it referred to some terrible affliction. Don't talk to Nannie about that, yet, Biddy. You're both better off with the kind mistress, and the nice home, and the warmth and comfort all about you, than you would be with ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... pilot, the face of the water in time became a wonderful book. For the uninitiated traveller it was a dead language, but to the young pilot it gave up its most cherished secrets. He came to feel that there had never been so wonderful a book written by man. To its haunting beauty, its enfolding mystery, he yielded himself unreservedly —drinking it in like one bewitched. ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... language of their conquerors, and presently it came to pass that not even the native Egyptian remembered the elusive secrets of his own written language. Egyptian, as a spoken tongue, remained, in a modified form, as Koptic, but at about the beginning of our era the classical Egyptian had become a dead language. No one any longer wrote in the hieroglyphic, hieratic, or demotic scripts; in a word, the hieroglyphic writing was forgotten. The reader of Professor Maspero's pages has had opportunity to learn how this secret was discovered in the nineteenth century. This information is further amplified in the ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... his bondage to physical love. Had he lived longer he might have invaded other worlds. His recasting of Hyperion opens with a cry of distrust in the artist who is content to live in the little world of his art. His very revulsion against the English of Milton was a revulsion against the dead language of formal beauty. But it is in formal beauty—the formal beauty especially of the Ode on a Grecian Urn, which has never been surpassed in literature—that his own achievement lies. He is great among the pagans, not among the prophets. Unless we keep ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd


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