"dead in the water" meaning in English

See dead in the water in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Adjective

Audio: en-au-dead in the water.ogg [Australia]
Head templates: {{en-adj|-}} dead in the water (not comparable)
  1. (nautical) Stationary with respect to the current, having no means of propulsion. Tags: not-comparable Categories (topical): Nautical Translations (without inertia): tuuliajolla (Finnish), sans erre (French)
    Sense id: en-dead_in_the_water-en-adj-Bxcl3krf Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 90 10 Topics: nautical, transport Disambiguation of 'without inertia': 57 43
  2. (figurative) Doomed; unable to succeed. Tags: figuratively, not-comparable
    Sense id: en-dead_in_the_water-en-adj-d5KM5hn9

Download JSON data for dead in the water meaning in English (3.4kB)

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          "ref": "2021 March 10, Drachinifel, 22:59 from the start, in Guadalcanal Campaign - The Big Night Battle: Night 1 (IJN 3(?) : 2 USN), archived from the original on 2022-11-07",
          "text": "Unaware of her compatriots' fate, Aaron Ward found herself staring down the gun barrels of Kirishima, a fight that did not end well for the destroyer, which was soon dead in the water.",
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        "(nautical) Stationary with respect to the current, having no means of propulsion."
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          "code": "fi",
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          "ref": "1981, Richard Maibaum, Michael G. Wilson, Ian Fleming, For Your Eyes Only, spoken by Frederick Gray (Geoffrey Keen)",
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          "type": "quotation"
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          "ref": "2004, Aline Brosh McKenna, Robert Harling, Laws of Attraction, spoken by Audrey Woods (Julianne Moore)",
          "text": "Each case I handle convinces me further that marriage is dead in the water.",
          "type": "quotation"
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          "ref": "2021 June 16, Adam Morton, quoting Jacqui Lambie, “‘Dead in the water’: key crossbenchers reject Coalition demand to back new environment standards”, in The Guardian, →ISSN",
          "text": "Lambie said the crossbench had been clear it also wanted a better approvals process in place before the end of the year, but the minister’s reforms would be “dead in the water if she doesn’t tighten up the standards”.",
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          "ref": "2021 September 9, Jamie Grierson, “Patel’s plans to send migrant boats back to France unworkable, union says”, in The Guardian, →ISSN",
          "text": "Priti Patel’s plans to send back small boats carrying migrants in the Channel are already “dead in the water”, an immigration workers’ union has said.",
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        "(figurative) Doomed; unable to succeed."
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          "ref": "2021 March 10, Drachinifel, 22:59 from the start, in Guadalcanal Campaign - The Big Night Battle: Night 1 (IJN 3(?) : 2 USN), archived from the original on 2022-11-07",
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  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "without inertia",
      "word": "tuuliajolla"
    },
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      "code": "fr",
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      "sense": "without inertia",
      "word": "sans erre"
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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 2024-05-05 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). 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.