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Dictionary

Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

dead wood en · NOUN

Pronunciation

Meanings

  1. (figuratively, uncountable) Matters or things that have become unnecessary or otherwise useless; bloat, dead weight.
    • Everybody knows that when you have a layoff, you use it as chance to get rid of the people you wanted to get rid of anyway, but couldn't document or hadn't bothered documenting as bad employees […]. If you don't have much dead wood, you hope they make you use a senioentrity list, because then you can say it's out of your control. 2001, Michael B. Arthur, Denise M. Rousseau, The Boundaryless Career: A New Employment Principle for a New Organizational Era, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 140:
  2. (uncountable) Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see dead, wood.

Deriveds

put the dead wood on

Relateds

Deadwood · chainsaw consultant · deadwood · clean house

Translations (6)

fi riippakivi ((figuratively) matters or things that have become unnecessary or otherwise useless) · pl zbędne rzeczy ((figuratively) matters or things that have become unnecessary or otherwise useless) · fi kuollut puu ((literally) wood that is dead) · pl martwe drewno ((literally) wood that is dead) · fr bois mort ((figuratively) matters or things that have become unnecessary or otherwise useless) · fr bois mort ((literally) wood that is dead)