dead zonen.
/ˈdɛd zəʊn/, U.S. /ˈdɛd ˌzoʊn/ 1.
a. An area where no life (of a particular kind) exists, or can exist. Also: an area where access is restricted or forbidden, a no-go area. Frequently figurative or hyperbolical.
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the world > existence and causation > creation > productiveness > unproductiveness > [noun] > unproductive place
no man's landc1350
wilderness1594
wastage1823
Sahara1855
wasteland1869
dead zone1902
1902 Geogr. Jrnl. 19 219 The expedition passed for nine days through entirely uninhabited primeval forest—the ‘dead zone’ of the German traveller, though this refers only to the absence of human inhabitants.
1929 Times 20 July 11/2 In regard to the neutral frontier zone, it insists that this should be a dead zone—i.e., one which no one, with the exceptions of the indigenous population, would have the right to enter without special authorization.
1999 Earth Matters Summer 14/2 What is more, they see Britain as a dead zone.
2005 Independent 26 Feb. (Mag.) 51/1 Here, in an industrial dead zone below the railway, the Children of God gathered to worship.
b. Ecology. An expanse of water in which the content of dissolved oxygen is too low to support life, esp. as a result of pollution with nitrogen, phosphorus, and organic waste; spec. such a hypoxic zone of water at the bottom of some seas and lakes.
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the world > the earth > water > body of water > [noun]
watereOE
freshlOE
openc1485
strand1513
shard1590
water body1723
drink1832
lane1835
swim1880
nappe1887
dead zone1971
1934 O. Barton Half Mile Down vii. 144 All visible life ceased, and we drifted over a wide expanse of desert, with no fish or plumes or living coral. I have no idea of the significance of this dead zone.]
1971 World Politics 23 631 These ‘drowned logs’, as they are called, consume the oxygen dissolved in the water and form the anaerobic, or dead, zone.
1985 N.Y. Times 15 Dec. ii. 31/2 Several experts said a ‘dead zone’ of severely deoxygenated water had been identified in the deepest waters of western Long Island Sound.
2005 Southland (N.Z.) Times (Nexis) 27 June 1 The world's largest ‘dead zones’ are 70,000 square kilometres of the Baltic Sea; 40,000 square kilometres of the north-western Black Sea; and 17,000 square kilometres in the northern Gulf of Mexico.
2. An area where there is no signal reception or transmitter coverage for radios, mobile phones, etc.
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the world > the earth > region of the earth > zone or belt > [noun]
linea1387
climatea1393
clime1553
region1556
zone1559
belt1796
subzone1851
dead zone1926
1926 Lima (Ohio) News & Times-Democrat 14 May 4/1 A number of ships have encountered this magnetic barrier..and have been as long as three days out of radio communication while in the ‘dead zone’.
1966 Playground Daily News (Fort Walton Beach, Florida) 23 Dec. 18/5 Thanks to work now being done by a new U. S. Satellite, these communications ‘Dead Zones’ which now exist over the Atlantic, Pacific and other remote regions of the world may someday be erased.
1996 Evening Standard (Nexis) 19 Dec. 5 The car-phone diplomatically hit a dead zone.
2004 N.Y. Times Mag. 8 Feb. 22/3 Cellphone service offers another approach, enabling anyone who pays a monthly fee to make a call from anyplace in the world (until he stumbles into a dead zone).
This is a new entry (OED Third Edition, June 2006; most recently modified version published online June 2019).
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n.1902