deadlight
deadlight noun: a strong (often wooden) shutter fitted over a porthole, that can be closed in bad weather to keep water out and discourage the glass windows from breaking.
Noun
deadlight (plural deadlights)
- A strong (often wooden) shutter fitted over a porthole, that can be closed in bad weather to keep water out and discourage the glass windows from breaking.
- A deck prism, a device to allow light into the cabin of boat through the deck.
- An eye.
- Here you comes and tells me of it plain; and here I let him give us all the slip before my blessed deadlights!1881–1882, Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island, London; Paris: Cassell & Company, published 14 November 1883, →OCLC
- An eyelid.
- He had one hand on the bounce bottle—and he'd never let go of that since he got back to the table—but he had a handkerchief in the other and was swabbing his deadlights with it.1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter VI, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC
Forms of deadlight
| plural | deadlights |
|---|---|
| alternative form | dead-light |
| alternative form | dead light |
Origin of deadlight
From dead + light.
Questions about deadlight
- What does deadlight mean?
- Deadlight means a strong (often wooden) shutter fitted over a porthole, that can be closed in bad weather to keep water out and discourage the glass windows from breaking.
- What part of speech is deadlight?
- Deadlight is a noun.
- What is the plural of deadlight?
- The plural of deadlight is deadlights.
Words near deadlight in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: deadlight (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: “deadlight.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/deadlight. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.