Word.ws English Dictionary

DOA

DOA is the initialism of dead on arrival.

DOA is the initialism of defective on arrival.

Meaning of dead on arrival

Adjective

dead on arrival (not comparable)

  1. Found to be dead upon arriving at hospital.
  2. Found dead at a scene, upon the arrival of an emergency medical service (EMS) or the police.
    Synonyms:
    DOA
  3. (slang) Of a new item: received broken.
  4. (slang) Being a failure from the start, a nonstarter.

Meaning of defective on arrival

Adjective

defective on arrival (not comparable)

  1. Upon receipt, damaged or defective to the point of being unusable.
    Synonyms:
    DOA

Questions about DOA

What is DOA the initialism of?
DOA is the initialism of dead on arrival.

Words near DOA in the dictionary

  1. do-si-dos
  2. do-support
  3. do-while loop
  4. do-while loops
  5. do.
  6. DOA
  7. doab
  8. Doaba
  9. Doabi
  10. doabilities
  11. doability

Source and license

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