Word.ws English Dictionary

deadass

deadass adjective: having very little activity; dead.

Adjective

deadass (comparative more deadass, superlative most deadass)

  1. Having very little activity; dead.
    • I could tell what you two had right off the bat. It was the same with me and my Rosario. That's what keeps me goin in this deadass joint, because there's no way she don't show someday and when that day comes the round man hauls some vino outta one of them shrouds he uses as filin cabinets or you're...1981, Paul Sann, Trial in the Upper Room: A Heavenly Novel, New York, N.Y.: Crown Publishers, Inc., →ISBN, page 72
    • On my way back to town I get to thinking about what Sandee said about Kirby: 'Fix the bastard'. Hmm...maybe we should. After all, what else is there to do on a Friday night in our deadass town?2000, Greg Benjamin, Landed, London: Quartet Books, →ISBN, page 45
  2. Genuine; real. Used as a negative intensifier.
    • He bellowed at us, yelling that he was fucked if he was going to let a group of dead-ass wankers spoil his time off.1989, Christian Jennings, Mouthful of Rocks: Through Africa and Corsica in the French Foreign Legion, London: Bloomsbury, →ISBN, page 46
    • "Mad Dog" Maurice Vachon, one of the awa's top stars for years, wasn't what you would call a great worker. He was as unorthodox as hell, but his interviews were such a deadass shoot about how mean he was, how ferocious he was and how he was going to tear you limb from limb that no one watching his...2006, Bill Watts, The Cowboy and the Cross: The Bill Watts Story: Rebellion, Wrestling and Redemption, Toronto. O.N.: ECW Press, →ISBN, page 199
  3. Dead serious.
    • You need to quit talking about my mama. I'm deadass.
    • "Oh yeah, Dior. Tell ya' boss if he like his life then he better keep his distance from you. Deadass," He said from the bathroom and my eyes widened.2017, Amber Shanel, He Was the Savage for Me, Columbus, G.A.: Talehia Presents, →ISBN, page 116

Adverb

deadass (not comparable)

  1. Directly; dead on.
    • As he started inside, thinking only of fresh water and bed, Frenchy said, "Hurry back and I'll help you fix the baits." / "We're not through?" / "Oh, man, Joe keeps his pots at work, not deadass on deck."1979, William McCloskey, Highliners, Guilford, C.T.: Lyons Press, published 2000, →ISBN, page 257
    • I slapped the Mexican on the helmet— that was the signal to fire—and whoosh! that 106 round hit dead ass on top of the gooks. Whooo, the first time! The other guys scrambled up out of that trench and jumped all over us.1990, James R. Wilson, Landing Zones, Durham, N.C.; London: Duke University Press, →ISBN, page 197
  2. Really; seriously; actually.
    • I was deadass starving.
    • "Im positively deadass tired,' she says, rushing over to us. "Babies, there just aint no one at the 1-2-3—someone's been spreading rumors that theres so much junk being sold there that the cops are gonna knock it over any day!"1963, John Rechy, City of Night, New York, N.Y.: Grove Press, Inc., →ISBN, page 142

Noun

deadass (plural deadasses)

  1. (US, slang) A lazy or unenergetic person.
    • […] us women know which man has got the spring and who and which is the unfortunate dead ass […]1967, Norman Mailer, Why Are We in Vietnam?, New York, N.Y.: G. P. Putnam's Sons, page 18
    • He comes onto the ward with his tight reddish-blond curls tumbling out from under his cap, cracking jokes and trying to get some action going among these deadasses in the loony bin.1968, Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, New York, N.Y.: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →OCLC, page 50

Examples of deadass in a sentence

  • Anybody'd come along an' spied you deadass drunk on the plain woulda took yer hair, yer ponies, an' yer stash.2013, Bill Blinn, Sons of Slavery, Colorado Springs, C.O.: Grit West Publishing, →ISBN, page 513:
  • Eilish talks like an Instagram caption come to life — everything is "fire" or "trash," bro, and she is always "deadass."2019 March 28, Joe Coscarelli, “Billie Eilish Is Not Your Typical 17-Year-Old Pop Star. Get Used to Her.”, in The New York Times, New York...
  • this look is still her best outfit she's ever worn and i'm being deadass2023 May 15, @ev3rhaze, Twitter, archived from the original on 23 Jul 2023:
  • "Sometimes," he observed seriously, "you can't tell truth when it's staring you deadass in the face.1991, Jacquelyn Holt Park, A Stone Gone Mad, New York, N.Y.: Random House, →ISBN, pages 140–141:

Forms of deadass

Adjective
comparativemore deadass
superlativemost deadass
alternative formdead ass
alternative formdead-ass
alternative formdeaduzz
Noun
pluraldeadasses

Origin of deadass

From dead + -ass (“used to intensify an adjective”). Some senses from an ellipsis of dead-ass serious, from dead serious + -ass. Originated in New York City, and popularized around the late 1990s–2000s.

Questions about deadass

What does deadass mean?
Deadass means having very little activity; dead.
How do you use deadass in a sentence?
Anybody'd come along an' spied you deadass drunk on the plain woulda took yer hair, yer ponies, an' yer stash.
What part of speech is deadass?
Deadass can be an adjective, an adverb or a noun.

Words near deadass in the dictionary

  1. deadaptation
  2. deadaptations
  3. deadapted
  4. deadapting
  5. deadapts
  6. deadass
  7. deadasses
  8. deadband
  9. deadbands
  10. deadbeat
  11. deadbeat dad

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: deadass (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Sapaa-deadass.wav.

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