Everyone knows that the most common meaning of the adjective dead is “not alive”, “deprived of life ; of an emotion (now that Valentine’s day is coming) ” no longer felt” : a dead passion, dead affections.

The word is used in a couple of other interesting ways, though… For instance, you can say “dead tired” to mean “extremely tired” – (EX: “Jim was dead tired after driving for 20 hours straight”). “Dead wrong” means “completely wrong”. In this usage, you can see that the word has the meaning of “very”, “completely”, “extremely”, etc. To be dead on means to be “completely right/correct”. Another expression that uses “dead” is “the dead center of (something)”, which means “the very center of (something)”.