dead end
28
2.7
- noun
- /dɛd ɛnd/
:
calle sin salida
- If one didn't examine it carefully, it appeared to be a dead end.
- come to a dead end
- leads to a dead end
What you thought to be the shortest path was in fact a dead end.
- What you thought to be the shortest path was in fact a dead end.
- We made a right, holy shit, it's a fucking dead end.
- A labyrinth will always have a way forward where a maze will have dead ends.
- Sometimes there are impasses, there are dead ends that you know you have to come back out of and go around.
- So they went to the old part of the city and they found what Hartley Trent and I both described as a dead end St.
- We kept going into dead ends, work our way back.
- He came through the cut and ran all the way down to like to the end like, well, our street, it was a dead end on our street.
Examples
-
I live alone in a big house on a dead end street.
-
I live alone in a big house on a dead end street.
-
This one really is a dead end.
-
Our road is 5 miles long to a dead end, and about 12 homes are on it.
Blog text (6) -
Finally, I reached a wide wall and a dead end on the fourth floor landing.
Blog text (32) -
The girl bicycled to the dead end of the road.
Fiction book (1998) -
We lived on Chestnut Street, a dead end off Center St, above Oak.
Blog text (12) -
Finally, he managed to force the vehicle into a dead-end cul-de-sac.
Fiction book (1990) -
A few times we reached dead ends in the dirt road and had to backtrack.
-
The man drove behind a nearby senior citizen's center, down a dead-end street by an empty field.
Synonyms
21
4.7
A short street closed at one end with no through traffic
4
2.1
A street that ends at one side so cars cannot drive through
1
8.1
A street that ends and has no other exit
A street closed at one end with only one way in or out
How Productive
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a situation in which no further progress is possible' is directly derivable from combining 'dead' (inactive, lacking life or activity) with 'end' (a final stopping point): together they signal a terminal point with no continuation. This compound is a common, mostly literal spatial term (a street with no exit) that is easily extended metaphorically to situations, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents will generally infer the meaning.
Etymology
Dead end comes from the simple image of a road that stops and does not lead anywhere, with dead meaning 'no way through' and end meaning the finish. So it means a street or passage closed at one side where you must turn back.