left for dead
15
8.3
- idiom
- Informal
:
dado por muerto
- After the avalanche, many were left for dead, trapped under the snow and awaiting rescue.
- beaten and left for dead
- raped and left for dead
- tortured and left for dead
And he found his own child, Jonbenet, had been strangled and left for dead on a concrete floor.
- And he found his own child, Jonbenet, had been strangled and left for dead on a concrete floor.
- A woman had her throat slit out here, was pushed off the side of the Canyon, left for dead.
- My wing wound up beside the road, left for dead.
Examples
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She was beaten, left for dead.
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Hanson was beaten and left for dead.
Blog text (4) -
Whole homes full of children left for dead.
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Run over and left for dead, huh?
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My uncle was shot and left for dead.
Blog text (4) -
Neglected and left for dead by the people who were supposed to look after us.
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We were double-crossed and left for dead.
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He was shot and left for dead after cheating at cards.
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His wife had her skull fractured with a pole and was left for dead, but she survived for 12 hours before being discovered by a neighbor.
Blog text (4) -
A white non-union foreman, Mark Cain, was left for dead, and two black non-union foremen, John Williams and William Adams, were shot several times.
Academic text (2008)
Synonyms
Antonyms
How Abandoned
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'left' (abandoned) combined with 'dead' (not alive) yields the idea of someone being abandoned in a condition where they are presumed to die or left to die. The preposition 'for' marks the result/purpose and similar constructions exist cross-linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents can readily infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
The phrase left for dead comes from battlefields, where soldiers too badly hurt were sometimes left behind because others thought they were already dead. That's why today it means 'abandoned' or 'presumed dead'.