Word.ws English Dictionary

dead as a doornail

dead as a doornail adjective: unquestionably dead. Used for both inanimate objects and once living beings.

Adjective

dead as a doornail

  1. (simile) Unquestionably dead. Used for both inanimate objects and once living beings.
    • I picked up the phone, but the line was dead as a doornail.
    • We finally found John's cat run over in the next road. He was as dead as a doornail.

dead as a doornail meaning in Arabic

dead as a doornail in Arabic

unquestionably dead
شبع موت

Forms of dead as a doornail

alternative formdeader than a doornail

Origin of dead as a doornail

From Middle English ded as dore-nail. One of the earliest usages in English is in William Langland's poem Piers Plowman A. i. 161 (late 14th century) "Fey withouten fait is febelore þen nouȝt, And ded as a dore-nayl", though it is unlikely this is Langland's invention. It also appears in the English William of Palerne l. 628 "For but ich haue bote of mi bale‥I am ded as dore-nail" and in the alliterative debate poem The Parlement of the Thre Ages "Dede als a dore-nayle doune was he fallen" 65. Both of these texts are of uncertain date, and may predate Langland's usage. One plausible explanation is that doors were built using only wood boards and hand-forged nails: the nails were long enough to dead nail the (vertical) wooden panels and (horizontal) stretcher boards securely together, so they would not easily pull apart. This was done by pounding the protruding point of the nail over and down into the wood. A nail that was bent in this fashion (and thus not easily pulled out) was said to be "dead", thus dead as a doornail.

Questions about dead as a doornail

What does dead as a doornail mean?
Dead as a doornail means unquestionably dead. Used for both inanimate objects and once living beings.
What is dead as a doornail in Arabic?
Dead as a doornail in Arabic is شبع موت. See Dead as a doornail meaning in Arabic.
What part of speech is dead as a doornail?
Dead as a doornail is an adjective.

Words near dead as a doornail in the dictionary

  1. dead angle
  2. dead angles
  3. dead arm syndrome
  4. dead as a dodo
  5. dead as a doorknob
  6. dead as a doornail
  7. dead as a herring
  8. dead as a kipper
  9. dead as a mackerel
  10. dead as ditch-water
  11. dead as Hector

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dead as a doornail (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-dead as a doornail.ogg.

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