Word.ws English Dictionary

dead-pay

dead-pay noun: pay drawn for soldiers, or others, really dead, whose names are kept on the payroll.

Noun

dead-pay (countable and uncountable, plural dead-pays)

  1. Pay drawn for soldiers, or others, really dead, whose names are kept on the payroll.
    • O you commanders, / That, like me, have no dead-pays.c. 1621-1626, Philip Massinger, The Unnatural Combat
  2. A dead soldier whose pay is illicitly claimed by another person.

Forms of dead-pay

pluraldead-pays

Questions about dead-pay

What does dead-pay mean?
Dead-pay means pay drawn for soldiers, or others, really dead, whose names are kept on the payroll.
What part of speech is dead-pay?
Dead-pay is a noun.
What is the plural of dead-pay?
The plural of dead-pay is dead-pays.

Words near dead-pay in the dictionary

  1. dead-on
  2. dead-pan
  3. dead-panned
  4. dead-panning
  5. dead-pans
  6. dead-pay
  7. dead-pays
  8. dead-red
  9. dead-reds
  10. dead-ringer
  11. dead-ringers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dead-pay (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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