DEAD WEIGHT

Pronunciation (US):

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IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does dead weight mean? 

• DEAD WEIGHT (noun)
  The noun DEAD WEIGHT has 2 senses:

1. an oppressive encumbrance

2. a heavy motionless weight

  Familiarity information: DEAD WEIGHT used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DEAD WEIGHT (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

An oppressive encumbrance

Classified under:

Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

Hypernyms ("dead weight" is a kind of...):

burden; encumbrance; incumbrance; load; onus (an onerous or difficult concern)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A heavy motionless weight

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Hypernyms ("dead weight" is a kind of...):

weight (the vertical force exerted by a mass as a result of gravity)

 Context examples 

As he was thus speaking, he had risen from bed with great difficulty, holding to my shoulder with a grip that almost made me cry out, and moving his legs like so much dead weight.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Miss Murdstone's heavy eyebrows followed me to the door—I say her eyebrows rather than her eyes, because they were much more important in her face—and she looked so exactly as she used to look, at about that hour of the morning, in our parlour at Blunderstone, that I could have fancied I had been breaking down in my lessons again, and that the dead weight on my mind was that horrible old spelling-book, with oval woodcuts, shaped, to my youthful fancy, like the glasses out of spectacles.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

In such a party, Harriet would be rather a dead weight than otherwise; but for the poor girl herself, it seemed a peculiarly cruel necessity that was to be placing her in such a state of unmerited punishment.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)