Word.ws English Dictionary

dead dove

dead dove noun: a disclaimer or tag for fan fiction, particularly on Archive of Our Own, signifying that the work contains the content that is described, and as such, readers should not complain or be surprised about finding that content.

Noun

dead dove (countable and uncountable, plural dead doves)

  1. (countable, slang) A disclaimer or tag for fan fiction, particularly on Archive of Our Own, signifying that the work contains the content that is described, and as such, readers should not complain or be surprised about finding that content.
  2. (countable, slang) A fan fiction that is particularly disturbing or disgusting due to its subject matter.
  3. (slang, uncountable) Such fan fiction, collectively.
  4. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see dead, dove.

Synonyms of dead dove

Forms of dead dove

pluraldead doves
alternative formdead dove: do not eat

Origin of dead dove

Referencing a scene from the second episode of the American satirical sitcom Arrested Development, in which the character Michael Bluth inspects a bag labelled Dead Dove: Do Not Eat and, having found a dead dove inside, remarks on his surprise, "Well, I don't know what I expected." Coined by Tumblr user mostlyvalid in 2015 as an Archive of Our Own tag to "signal[] that a given fanwork is for rolling around [in tropes that might be viewed as problematic], not giving a measured evaluation of anything. […] there will not necessarily be any subversion, authorial commentary condemning problematic aspects, or meditation on potential harm."

Questions about dead dove

What does dead dove mean?
Dead dove means a disclaimer or tag for fan fiction, particularly on Archive of Our Own, signifying that the work contains the content that is described, and as such, readers should not complain or be surprised about finding that content.
What part of speech is dead dove?
Dead dove is a noun.
What is the plural of dead dove?
The plural of dead dove is dead doves.

Words near dead dove in the dictionary

  1. dead comets
  2. dead donkey
  3. dead donkeys
  4. dead door
  5. dead doors
  6. dead dove
  7. dead dove: do not eat
  8. dead doves
  9. dead drop
  10. dead dropped
  11. dead dropping

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dead dove (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “dead dove.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dead_dove. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.