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dead weight

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dead weight

1. The weight of someone who is sleeping, unconscious, or intentionally limp, making him or her more difficult to move or carry that he or she would be otherwise. Jamie struggled with the dead weight of her sleeping 10-year-old son when she tried to carry him to bed.

2. A burden that holds someone or something else back or prevents progress; someone or something that when handled or associated with conveys only difficulty and not benefit. You've been dead weight this entire road trip. You've just sat there without driving or paying for gas or anything! All those empty containers are dead weight. We're going to have to jettison them if we want to have enough fuel to make it back.

See also: dead, weight

dead weight

A heavy or oppressive burden, as in That police record will be a dead weight on his career. This term alludes to the unrelieved weight of an inert mass. [Early 1700s]

See also: dead, weight