in the dead of winter
3
5.1
- idiom
- UK
:
en pleno invierno
- In the dead of winter, they rose at three in the morning to warm up the car.
- Even in the dead of winter
- warm enough in the dead of winter
Examples
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Traveling across the mountains in the dead of winter can be treacherous due to heavy snowfall.
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A contract dispute between Russia and Ukraine has left several cities without natural gas in the dead of winter.
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In the first place, it was in the dead of winter, and I had no warm clothes with me.
Fiction book (1995) -
Do you have any idea what it costs to heat a pool in Connecticut in the dead of winter?
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I hear you on the need for an escape, especially from here in Maine in the dead of winter!
Blog text (22) -
I can't imagine how horrible it must be to have no heat in the dead of winter.
Blog text (23) -
I first laid eyes on Ralston Heights in the dead of winter ten years ago.
Academic text (2004) -
In the dead of winter, her skin and hair seemed magically touched with the sun.
Fiction book (1995) -
Why do I venture out to the ocean to swim in the dead of winter, when most people don't even want to be outside, let alone in the water?
Blog text (24) -
The air seemed filled with an exotic aroma—the scent of a flower garden blooming in the dead of winter.
Fiction book (1992)
Synonyms
8
3.9
The coldest, most severe part of winter
5
3.5
The middle part of winter that is often the coldest time
How Cold
Surface Forms
Morphology
The prepositional frame 'in the ... of winter' clearly signals a temporal location, but 'dead' here is used metaphorically to mean the deepest/most intense part rather than its literal sense 'not alive'. This metaphoric intensification is partially compositional (pointing to the extreme part of winter) but is not fully predictable for a B1 learner who only knows the literal meaning of 'dead', so it is only partially transparent.
Etymology
In the dead of winter comes from the image of winter when everything looks dead. So it means 'the coldest and darkest time of winter', when conditions are hardest.