Word.ws English Dictionary

dead weights

dead weights is the plural of dead weight.

Meaning of dead weight

Noun

dead weight (countable and uncountable, plural dead weights)

  1. Unremitting heavy weight that does not move.
    • His dead weight, as he abruptly collapses, pulls his lapels from her hands, reminding her to step back, off-balancing whoever is behind her, […]2003, William Gibson, Pattern Recognition (Bigend cycle; book 1), New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, →ISBN, page 154
  2. The largest weight of cargo a ship is able to carry; i.e., the weight of a ship when fully loaded minus its weight when empty.
  3. A dead load.
  4. (figuratively) That which is useless or excess; that which slows something down.
    • She wants to shed the dead weight of so many stacks of old clutter.
  5. The total (unpowered) weight of a train to be propelled (or hauled) by the locomotive; another locomotive being hauled dead as part of the train is a dead weight.
    • Having dropped the coach, the trio returned with the Class 47 leading and the other two locomotives as dead weight.2023 November 29, “Network News: Test runs for WCR fleet returnees”, in RAIL, number 997, page 24

See all 6 meanings of dead weight

Questions about dead weights

What is dead weights the plural of?
Dead weights is the plural of dead weight.

Words near dead weights in the dictionary

  1. dead water
  2. dead waters
  3. dead week
  4. dead weeks
  5. dead weight
  6. dead weights
  7. dead white European male
  8. dead white European males
  9. dead wife flashback
  10. dead wife montage
  11. dead wife montages

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dead weights (page history and authors); dead weight (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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Cite this entry: “dead weights.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dead_weights. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.