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dead weight, ˈdead-weight
[dead a. 29.]
1. a. The heavy unrelieved weight of an inert body. (lit. and fig.)
1660Boyle New Exp. Phys. Mech. xxxiii. 238 When the Sucker came to be moved onely with a dead weight or pressure. 1702Savery Miner's Friend 81 The Moving Cause, as Mens Hands, Horses, or Dead Weight. 1711Shaftesbury Charac. i. iii. (1737) I. 67 Pedantry and Bigotry are Mill-stones able to sink the best Book which carries the least part of their dead weight. 1844Dickens Mart. Chuz. xlvi, Mrs. Gamp..forced him backwards down the stairs by the mere oppression of her dead-weight.
b. techn. (See quots.)
1858Simmonds Dict. Trade, Dead Weight, heavy merchandise forming part of a ship's cargo. 1867Smyth Sailor's Word-bk., Dead weight, a vessel's lading when it consists of heavy goods, but particularly such as pay freight according to their weight and not their stowage. 1874Knight Dict. Mech., Dead-weight, the weight of the vehicle of any kind; that which must be transported in addition to the load. 1881Lubbock in Nature No. 618. 412 The saving in dead weight, by this improvement alone, is from 10 to 16 per cent.
2. A heavy inert weight: fig. a heavy weight or burden pressing with unrelieved force upon a person, institution, etc.
1721De Foe Mem. Cavalier (1840) 282 The Scots..were always the dead weight upon the king's affairs. 1785C. Thomas in Med. Commun. II. 79 A lump or dead weight, as he termed it, in his inside. 1792A. Young Trav. France 113 His character is a dead weight upon him. 1822Hazlitt Table-t., Convers. of Lords (1852) 242 We not only deter the student from the attempt, but lay a dead-weight upon the imagination. 1876F. E. Trollope Charming Fellow III. xviii. 229 It was extremely exhilarating..to find himself free..of the dead weight of debt.
†3. ‘A name given to an advance by the Bank of England to Government on account of the half-pay and pensions of the retired officers of the Army and Navy’ (Simmonds Dict. Trade). Obs.
The debt was paid off by an annuity which ceased in 1867.
1823Cobbett Rur. Rides (1885) I. 320 The six hundred millions of Debt and the hundred and fifty millions of dead⁓weight. 1826J. Hume in Hansard XVI. 184–5 The year 1822, when Mr. Vansittart brought before parliament the notable expedient to pay for the dead-weight..The country were induced to believe, that in forty-four years the whole of the dead-weight would be annihilated by the gradual decrement, by death, of the persons to whom the allowances out of it were payable.
4. attrib., as dead-weight debt, a debt not covered by assets, such as the greater part of the British National Debt; dead-weight (safety-)valve, a safety-valve kept down by a heavy weight.
1827Gentl. Mag. XCVII. ii. 13 Placed on the superannuation or dead weight list. 1894Westm. Gaz. 7 May 3/1 Dead-weight expenses have almost reached the irreducible minimum. 1902Encycl. Brit. XXXIII. 373/1 Deadweight capacity..is..the amount of deadweight which can be carried on the holds at load draught when the vessel is fully charged with coals and stores. 1904Goodchild & Tweney Technol. & Sci. Dict. 151/2 Dead weight safety valve. 1905Daily Chron. 16 May 4/4 There is dead-weight debt, and there is remunerative debt. 1909Ibid. 29 Apr. 4/4 Having brought the dead-weight Debt down to the total at which it stood twenty years ago. 1927T. Woodhouse Artificial Silk 16 A dead-weight safety valve. 1930Engineering 10 Oct. 461/2 Should the steam stop valve on the boiler be closed..the deadweight valve is opened. |