deadeye
UK/ˈdɛdaɪ/
deadeye adjective: very accurate in shooting or throwing.
Adjective
deadeye (not comparable)
- Very accurate in shooting or throwing.
- Gross, only a 20-year-old junior, is a deadeye passer, a poised runner and a quick-thinking field general.1961 November 2, Jerry Green, “Gross Dwarfed, But Not in Ability”, in The Milwaukee Sentinel
- Help in that department should come from highly touted freshman Jason Kapono, a 6'7" deadeye shooter who made 211 threes in high school.1999 November 15, Alan Shipnuck, “10 Ucla”, in Sports Illustrated, archived from the original on 28 Jun 2013
- Cold; unfriendly.
- The deadeye stare of the bassist was enough to make any normal person run.2004 July 28, Emma Field, “Sons and Daughters / The Archie Bronson Outfit, ICA, London”, in The Independent
- Outlandish in its violence and its conceit, "The Brave One" would be an interesting addendum to Foster's career even without its biographical frisson, without the image of Erica holding a gun with a deadeye stare […]2007 September 10, Manohla Dargis, “The real Jodie Foster, 100 percent professional”, in New York Times
Noun
deadeye (plural deadeyes)
- A wooden disk having holes through which the lanyard is passed, used for tightening shrouds.
- A very accurate marksman.
- He taught both my mother and me to shoot, taught my mother so well that she became a better shot than he was--a real deadeye.1989, Tobias Wolff, This Boy's Life: A Memoir
- Synonyms:
- dead-eye Dick, Deadeye Dick
- A penchant for noticing a particular thing, or a person who has such a penchant.
- He examined the cash balance daily, boasted he could pay off all debts in two hours, had a deadeye for fake figures in scanning a ledger, and personally audited the books each New Year's Day.1990, Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance
- Thirty-four years later, she was a tough CEO who went after Jimmy's detractors with a deadeye for the jugular.1999, Ann Rowe Seaman, Swaggart: The Unathorized Biography of an American Evangelist
Examples of deadeye in a sentence
- The old man was a natural sniper, a deadeye shooter even as a boy, and he served with my great uncle in the First World War.2008, Gerald Vizenor, Father Meme, University of New Mexico Press, →ISBN, page 94:
- Manny's memory had always been an arch-phenomenon of mimcry ^([sic]); he was a deadeye for all the destructive details.2002, Lilly Paige White, Manny Lesko: The Erotic History of Estelle Antoinette Francine Chevalier, iUniverse, →ISBN, page 42:
Synonyms of deadeye
Forms of deadeye
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| alternative form | dead-eye |
| Noun | |
| plural | deadeyes |
Origin of deadeye
From dead + eye. See glossary of nautical terms of "deadrise" for usage of "dead" to describe a stationary object or spatial stability of an object relative to motion. See nautical definition of "eye" for usage referring to the foremost part of a ship's bow that aims its orientation. For biological eye stabilization during head and neck movement, see vestibulo-ocular reflex
Words formed from deadeye
Phrases with deadeye
Questions about deadeye
- What does deadeye mean?
- Deadeye means very accurate in shooting or throwing.
- How do you use deadeye in a sentence?
- The old man was a natural sniper, a deadeye shooter even as a boy, and he served with my great uncle in the First World War.
- What part of speech is deadeye?
- Deadeye can be an adjective or a noun.
- How do you pronounce deadeye?
- Deadeye is pronounced /ˈdɛdaɪ/ (UK).
Words near deadeye in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: deadeye (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: “deadeye.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/deadeye. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.