"dead air" meaning in English

See dead air in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: en-au-dead air.ogg
Head templates: {{en-noun|-}} dead air (uncountable)
  1. (idiomatic, broadcasting) An unintended interruption in a broadcast during which nothing is transmitted: a silent period on radio or a silent period with no picture on television. Tags: idiomatic, uncountable Categories (topical): Broadcasting, Silence Synonyms: tumbleweed moment Translations (unintended interruption of a broadcast): átmeneti adásszünet (Hungarian)
    Sense id: en-dead_air-en-noun-qBoSKkvs Disambiguation of Silence: 53 47 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Entries with translation boxes, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries, Terms with Hungarian translations Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 87 13 Disambiguation of Entries with translation boxes: 93 7 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 91 9 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 94 6 Disambiguation of Terms with Hungarian translations: 65 35 Topics: broadcasting, media Disambiguation of 'unintended interruption of a broadcast': 98 2
  2. (idiomatic, by extension) A quiet or awkward moment in a conversation where neither individual is speaking. Tags: broadly, idiomatic, uncountable Categories (topical): Silence
    Sense id: en-dead_air-en-noun-hejwavgS Disambiguation of Silence: 53 47
The following are not (yet) sense-disambiguated
Related terms: radio silence
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        "(idiomatic, broadcasting) An unintended interruption in a broadcast during which nothing is transmitted: a silent period on radio or a silent period with no picture on television."
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          "word": "tumbleweed moment"
        }
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          "sense": "unintended interruption of a broadcast",
          "word": "átmeneti adásszünet"
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        "(idiomatic, broadcasting) An unintended interruption in a broadcast during which nothing is transmitted: a silent period on radio or a silent period with no picture on television."
      ],
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        }
      ],
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      "topics": [
        "broadcasting",
        "media"
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      "lang": "Hungarian",
      "sense": "unintended interruption of a broadcast",
      "word": "átmeneti adásszünet"
    }
  ],
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-02-17 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-02-02 using wiktextract (ca09fec and c40eb85). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.