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Glite Dictionary
🪑 Useless people 🌳 Dead tree part
deadwood

deadwood

3 6.9
People in a group or company who are no longer useful
  • noun
  • /ˈdɛdˌwʊd/
  • Offensive
: lastre
  • During a recession, companies first try to cut costs by getting rid of the deadwood, automation, outsourcing, etc.
  • remove deadwood
  • deadwood workers

Examples

  • There's lots of deadwood in the intelligence community.

    Blog text (28)

  • The rest of the fraternity is deadwood.

    Blog text (18)

  • - Well, see, they were over budget... and they wanted to get rid of some of the deadwood.

    Hooper (1978)

  • Let's use it to get out, drop the deadwood, and start fresh.

    Blog text (9)

  • He'd have a lot of deadwood to clear out, new men to hire.

    Fiction book (1990)

  • The deadwood at the top at most stations chooses not to innovate.

    Blog text (24)

  • The merger really did purge the deadwood and result in more money for success-driven editors like Alice.

    Academic text (2002)

  • While not fully back from the brink yet, I believe that from what I see and hear coming out of the Tech Center, GM has cleaned out a lot of the old deadwood and is making strides in the right direction.

    Blog text (14)

  • A lot of good people get swept up in downsizing purges, and a surprising amount of deadwood would still remain (especially if the people in charge of the RIF are the deadwood).

    Blog text (15)

  • To improve efficiency, the company decided to eliminate some of the deadwood from its staff.

Synonyms

fifth wheel
vsdeadwood
  • Offensive
3 7.0

A person who feels left out when others are a couple

applies more broadly to people and things judged useless within organizations
dead wood
vsdeadwood
  • Offensive
2 6.5

People or parts of a company that do not help the work

is the same idea but usually written as one word

Antonyms

valuable
700 2.5

Very useful and important, for example advice or skills

asset
147 3.5

A useful quality, skill, or person that helps someone succeed

How Useful

asset
147 3.5
liability
81 5.7
deadwood
  • Offensive
3 6.9
deadweight
3 5.8

Surface Forms

deadwood singular
deadwoods plural

Morphology

deadwood = dead + wood (semi-transparent) = dead + wood

The compound formation is clear, but the figurative extension to 'redundant people or things' is a metaphorical shift not fully predictable from the literal meanings.

Etymology

Deadwood comes from the parts dead and wood, giving the picture of a dead branch that does not help a tree. So, deadwood is used for people or things in a group that are 'not useful' and are often removed to help the group move forward.