Synonyms for dead-beat

Grammar : Adj

Spell : noun ded-beet; adjective ded-beet

Phonetic Transcription : noun ˈdɛdˌbit; adjective ˈdɛdˈbit

Top 10 synonyms for dead-beat

Other synonyms for the word dead-beat

Définition of dead-beat

Origin : "worthless sponging idler," 1863, American English slang, perhaps originally Civil War slang, from dead (adj.) + beat. Earlier used colloquially as an adjectival expression to mean "completely beaten" (1821), and perhaps the base notion is of "worn out, good for nothing." It is noted in a British source from 1861 as a term for "a pensioner."
In England "dead beat" means worn out, used up. ... But here, "dead beat" is used, as a substantive, to mean a scoundrel, a shiftless, swindling vagabond. We hear it said that such a man is a beat or a dead beat. The phrase thus used is not even good slang. It is neither humorous nor descriptive. There is not in it even a perversion of the sense of the words of which it is composed. Its origin is quite beyond conjecture. ["Americanisms," in "The Galaxy," January 1878]
It also was used of a kind of regulating mechanism in pendulum clocks.

As in fatigued : adj tired

Example sentences :

So the guns were left, and by the evening of the next day the foot were dead-beat.
Extract from : « Micah Clarke » by Arthur Conan Doyle

You're nothing but a renegade preacher, a dead-beat, and a hypocrite.
Extract from : « The Tyranny of the Dark » by Hamlin Garland

Escapements are of three classes: recoil, dead, or dead-beat; and detached.
Extract from : « Time Telling through the Ages » by Harry Chase Brearley

I would, perhaps, be regarded as a dead-beat, but what of that?
Extract from : « Broke » by Edwin A. Brown

Life is but a joke, but it isn't wise to let the dead-beat have the joke on you all the time.
Extract from : « How to Collect a Doctor Bill » by Frank P. Davis

If I should fall asleep on your sofa, don't waken me; I'm dead-beat.
Extract from : « The Red Room » by August Strindberg

He has been after all the fire-engines on foot, and is just come back, dead-beat.
Extract from : « Trevlyn Hold » by Mrs. Henry Wood

Chief of all these is the fact that it is not what engineers call "dead-beat."
Extract from : « Marvels of Scientific Invention » by Thomas W. Corbin

Although we were dead-beat the angel of sleep refused to come to us.
Extract from : « Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons » by Henry Charles Mahoney

McKenna, dead-beat, gained the outlying logs and fell as he reached solid earth.
Extract from : « The Boss of Wind River » by David Goodger (goodger@python.org)

Antonyms for dead-beat

Based on : Thesaurus.com - Gutenberg.org - Dictionary.com - Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019