Word.ws English Dictionary

deadwater

deadwater is the alternative form of dead water.

Meaning of dead water

Noun

dead water (countable and uncountable, plural dead waters)

  1. The eddying water under a slow-moving ship's counter, or a similar area of stationary fluid or gas in advance of a concave angle, which can occur when there is strong vertical density stratification (due to salinity or temperature or both), and can cause ships to become hard to control.
    • A "deadwater," that is a region occupied by stationary fluid or by gas at suitable pressure, ahead of a concave angle was shown to be possible by Villat.1967, David W. Taylor, Report - Naval Ship Research and Development Center, page 295
  2. A region in a body of moving water (or similar body of fluid in motion) where the water (fluid) is relatively stationary, or stagnant.
    • Some of our party went down the deadwater for a short distance in it and came back with three black ducks and one golden eye.1905, Acadiensis - Volume 5, page 135

Proper noun capitalized: Deadwater

Deadwater

  1. A suburb of Bordon in Whitehill parish, East Hampshire district, Hampshire, England (OS grid ref SU8035).
  2. A small settlement in Kielder parish, Northumberland, England, on the border with Scotland (OS grid ref NY6096).
    • The head of the North Tyne is reached at Deadwater, 36 miles from Hexham. The river has its source just on the English side of the Border, at the foot of Peel Fell, the most westerly spur of the Cheviots. At first it is a sluggish stream (hence the name Deadwater) but begins to flow more swiftly...1955 September, H. A. Vallance, “The Border Counties Line”, in Railway Magazine, page 594

Forms of deadwater

pluraldeadwaters

Questions about deadwater

What does deadwater mean?
Deadwater means a suburb of Bordon in Whitehill parish, East Hampshire district, Hampshire, England (OS grid ref SU8035).
What is deadwater the alternative form of?
Deadwater is the alternative form of dead water.
What part of speech is deadwater?
Deadwater is a proper noun.

Words near deadwater in the dictionary

  1. deadtimes
  2. deadverbal
  3. deadverbial
  4. deadvoice
  5. deadvoices
  6. deadwater
  7. deadwaters
  8. deadweight
  9. deadweight loss
  10. deadweight losses
  11. deadweight ton

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: deadwater (page history and authors); Deadwater (page history and authors); dead water (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: “deadwater.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/deadwater. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.