Dictionary
Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.
stop dead en · VERB
Pronunciation
Meanings
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(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 SAC general adds: "Leningrad." The bombers only turned around when the Soviet freighters carrying missiles to Cuba stopped dead in the Atlantic.
1995, Richard Rhodes, “Scorpions in a Bottle”, in Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, New York: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 575:
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