Word.ws English Dictionary

put the dead wood on

put the dead wood on verb: to gain a great advantage over (someone).

Verb

put the dead wood on (third-person singular simple present puts the dead wood on, present participle putting the dead wood on, simple past and past participle put the dead wood on)

  1. (US, dated, slang, transitive) To gain a great advantage over (someone).

Forms of put the dead wood on

third-person singular presentputs the dead wood on
present participleputting the dead wood on
past participleput the dead wood on
pastput the dead wood on

Questions about put the dead wood on

What does put the dead wood on mean?
Put the dead wood on means to gain a great advantage over (someone).
What part of speech is put the dead wood on?
Put the dead wood on is a verb.
What is the past tense of put the dead wood on?
The past tense of put the dead wood on is put the dead wood on.

Words near put the dead wood on in the dictionary

  1. put the change on someone
  2. put the clock back
  3. put the clock forward
  4. put the clocks back
  5. put the cork back in the bottle
  6. put the dead wood on
  7. put the fear of God into
  8. put the feedbag on
  9. put the finger on
  10. put the fries in the bag
  11. put the frighteners on someone

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: put the dead wood on (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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