dead asleep
2
3.5
- idiom
- /dɛd əˈslip/
- Informal
:
profundamente dormido
- No sooner had her dark-haired head nestled onto the curved comfort of her pillow-stone than she was dead asleep.
- fell dead asleep
He'd get on a plane, put everything away, belt up, and before the plane even took off, he'd be dead asleep.
- He'd get on a plane, put everything away, belt up, and before the plane even took off, he'd be dead asleep.
- And I just happened to look down and there was a dude sleeping on a cot, like right there, asleep, asleep, dead asleep.
Examples
-
Johnny is dead asleep.
Fiction book (1991) -
I keep singing until the song is finished, though he is dead asleep and no note, however faint, however felt, can reach him.
-
In the living room, Papa was dead asleep on the couch.
Fiction book (2000) -
I drank it all down, and within minutes I was dead asleep on my bed.
Fiction book (1996) -
His father and mother had gone to bed, and his uncle had fallen dead asleep on the cot, leaving only the muffled crickets chirping outside his box.
Fiction book (1997) -
In the afternoon, I lay down on the couch and was dead asleep within minutes.
-
After the long day at work, he collapsed into bed and fell dead asleep immediately.
-
The baby's soft breathing filled the room as she lay dead asleep in her crib.
Synonyms
∞
1.0
Not awake and not aware
353
1.0
A time when you are not awake
27
6.9
Unconscious or sleeping very deeply
19
2.5
Resting very deeply and not easy to wake
19
3.2
Resting very deeply and not waking easily
Antonyms
How Deep
Surface Forms
Morphology
The adjective 'dead' here functions as an intensifier meaning 'completely' and combined with 'asleep' (not awake) yields the straightforward sense 'completely/in a deep sleep'. This is a productive, compositional pattern in English (e.g. 'dead tired', 'dead quiet') and is readily inferable by a B1 learner who knows both constituents.
Etymology
Dead asleep shows someone so still and quiet they could be mistaken for dead, with asleep meaning sleeping. So dead here means 'completely', and that is why the phrase means 'in a very deep or sound sleep'.