dead in the water
dead in the water adjective: stationary with respect to the current, having no means of propulsion.
Adjective
dead in the water (not comparable)
- Stationary with respect to the current, having no means of propulsion.
- Unaware of her compatriots' fate, Aaron Ward found herself staring down the gun barrels of Kirishima, a fight that did not end well for the destroyer, which was soon dead in the water.2021 March 10, Drachinifel, 22:59 from the start, in Guadalcanal Campaign - The Big Night Battle: Night 1 (IJN 3(?) : 2 USN), archived from the original on 07 Nov 2022
- Doomed; unable to succeed.
- I'm afraid we have to inform the Prime Minister that Operation Undertow is dead in the water.1981, Richard Maibaum, Michael G. Wilson, Ian Fleming, For Your Eyes Only, spoken by Frederick Gray (Geoffrey Keen)
- Each case I handle convinces me further that marriage is dead in the water.2004, Aline Brosh McKenna, Robert Harling, Laws of Attraction, spoken by Audrey Woods (Julianne Moore)
Questions about dead in the water
- What does dead in the water mean?
- Dead in the water means stationary with respect to the current, having no means of propulsion.
- What part of speech is dead in the water?
- Dead in the water is an adjective.
Words near dead in the water in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: dead in the water (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 in the water.ogg.
Cite this entry: “dead in the water.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dead_in_the_water. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.