stop dead

Verb

stop dead (third-person singular simple present stops dead, present participle stopping dead, simple past and past participle stopped dead)

1. (idiomatic, intransitive) To stop suddenly.
   • At the height of the crisis, according to a retired SAC wing commander, SAC airborne alert bombers deliberately flew past their turnaround points toward Soviet airspace, an unambiguous threat which Soviet radar operators would certainly have recognized and reported. "I knew what my target was," the...1995, Richard Rhodes, “Scorpions in a Bottle”, in Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, New York: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 575