DEEP WATER

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does deep water mean? 

• DEEP WATER (noun)
  The noun DEEP WATER has 1 sense:

1. serious trouble

  Familiarity information: DEEP WATER used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DEEP WATER (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Serious trouble

Classified under:

Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

Hypernyms ("deep water" is a kind of...):

problem; trouble (a source of difficulty)

 Context examples 

As the water again sinks, relatively warmer deep water replaces it, creating a feedback loop where ice can't form again.

(Data from robotic drifters explain mysterious holes in Antarctic sea ice, National Science Foundation)

She started from my side, and ran along a jagged timber which protruded from the place we stood upon, and overhung the deep water at some height, without the least defence.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

It affected their minds as the many atmospheres of deep water affect the body of the diver.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

The poor devil has certainly got himself into very deep water, and it’s a question whether we shall ever be able to get him ashore.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

There was no way of penetrating the island from our cove, for the walls rose perpendicularly from the beach, and, on either side of the cove, rose from the deep water.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Sure eneuch, we had a fair way and deep water all the time; and two days ago, when the mornin' sun came through the fog, we found ourselves just in the river opposite Galatz.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

All this I shall some day write at fuller length, and amidst these more stirring days I would tenderly sketch in these lovely summer evenings, when with the deep blue sky above us we lay in good comradeship among the long grasses by the wood and marveled at the strange fowl that swept over us and the quaint new creatures which crept from their burrows to watch us, while above us the boughs of the bushes were heavy with luscious fruit, and below us strange and lovely flowers peeped at us from among the herbage; or those long moonlit nights when we lay out upon the shimmering surface of the great lake and watched with wonder and awe the huge circles rippling out from the sudden splash of some fantastic monster; or the greenish gleam, far down in the deep water, of some strange creature upon the confines of darkness.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He drove so directly to the core of the matter, divesting a question always of all superfluous details, and with such an air of finality, that I seemed to find myself struggling in deep water, with no footing under me.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)