deadleg
deadleg noun: a lazy or weak person. Also the alternative form of dead leg.
Noun
deadleg (plural deadlegs)
- A lazy or weak person.
- I was a bit of a deadleg in them days. You know, footloose and inclined to be rather flirtatious with the ladies.1961, Shelagh Delaney, The Lion in Love: A Play, page 83
- "I can tell you now, he's a no-good," said the Liverpool D.C.I. "His form is nothing to speak of, but he's the errand lad and head butterer-up for a deadleg called Pete Garside.1966, Maurice Procter, His weight in gold, page 56
- An isolated section of pipeline that does not usually carry a flow.
- There should be minimum deadleg between the valve and main process unit and, if possible, means for cleaning the deadleg.1996, K. Carr-Brion, J. R. P. Clarke, Sampling Systems for Process Analysers, →ISBN, page 182
- The pig trap was just under forty feet long, but the final six-foot section was a deadleg.2015, Jonathan Waldman, Rust: The Longest War, →ISBN, page 246
- A movement in which the hips and knees are kept straight and stiff and the ankle is flexed.
- Deadleg drills can also be performed by having one leg serve as the dealeg (hips and knees stiff, ankles dorsiflexed, active ground contact with the foot and the heel adhering o the credit card rule) and having the opposite leg perform other drills, such as A-skips, B-skips or straight-leg skips.2017, Clive Brewer, Athletic Movement Skills: Training for Sports Performance, →ISBN, page 202
- A vehicle that is traveling on a leg of its route in which it does not carry any cargo.
- Companies can transport on a nationwide basis but usually only carry their products out and have a deadleg on the return trip, e.g., the sugar distributors.1984, Gavin Grant Maasdorp, Transport Policies and Economic Development in Southern Africa
- Our convoy appeared as a huge centipede, winding its way uphill that had acquired various deadlegs at random.2001, Andrew Gurr, A Little Piece of England, page 79
Verb
deadleg (third-person singular simple present deadlegs, present participle deadlegging, simple past and past participle deadlegged)
- To knee someone in the thigh.
Also used as
deadleg is also the alternative form of dead leg.
Examples of deadleg in a sentence
- For the next year Liz lived alone with Lindy, occasionally consorting with 'more deadlegs', one of whom bruised Lindy when he had been drinking.1987, R. Calam, C. Franchi, Child Abuse and Its Consequences, →ISBN, page 76:
- Since air is denser than steam at sterilization temperatures, air will be displaced downward in the deadleg.2018, Wayne P. Olson, Sterilization of Drugs and Devices: Technologies for the 21st Century, →ISBN:
Forms of deadleg
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | deadlegs |
| alternative form | dead-leg |
| alternative form | dead leg |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | deadlegs |
| present participle | deadlegging |
| past participle | deadlegged |
| past | deadlegged |
Origin of deadleg
From dead + leg.
Questions about deadleg
- What does deadleg mean?
- Deadleg means a lazy or weak person.
- How do you use deadleg in a sentence?
- For the next year Liz lived alone with Lindy, occasionally consorting with 'more deadlegs', one of whom bruised Lindy when he had been drinking.
- What part of speech is deadleg?
- Deadleg can be a noun or a verb.
- What is the plural of deadleg?
- The plural of deadleg is deadlegs.
Words near deadleg in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: deadleg (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: “deadleg.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/deadleg. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.