Word.ws English Dictionary

dead waters

dead waters is the plural of dead water.

Meaning of dead water

Noun

dead water (countable and uncountable, plural dead waters)

  1. The eddying water under a slow-moving ship's counter, or a similar area of stationary fluid or gas in advance of a concave angle, which can occur when there is strong vertical density stratification (due to salinity or temperature or both), and can cause ships to become hard to control.
    • A "deadwater," that is a region occupied by stationary fluid or by gas at suitable pressure, ahead of a concave angle was shown to be possible by Villat.1967, David W. Taylor, Report - Naval Ship Research and Development Center, page 295
  2. A region in a body of moving water (or similar body of fluid in motion) where the water (fluid) is relatively stationary, or stagnant.
    • Some of our party went down the deadwater for a short distance in it and came back with three black ducks and one golden eye.1905, Acadiensis - Volume 5, page 135

Questions about dead waters

What is dead waters the plural of?
Dead waters is the plural of dead water.

Words near dead waters in the dictionary

  1. dead wagon
  2. dead wagons
  3. dead wall
  4. dead walls
  5. dead water
  6. dead waters
  7. dead week
  8. dead weeks
  9. dead weight
  10. dead weights
  11. dead white European male

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dead waters (page history and authors); dead 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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