Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Deadbeat, dead beat

 By special request of long-time-all-the-way-back-to-childhood buddy and fellow writer/author, Susan (Chernak McElroy) Knilans, I bring you deadbeat (and dead beat as well).

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The Online Etymology Dictionary provides us with the 1863 definition of deadbeat as a "worthless sponging idler." After that colorful description, OED notes that idiom might have originated in the Civil War, adding:

Earlier dead beat was used colloquially as an adjectival expression, "completely beaten, so exhausted as to be incapable of further exertion" (1821), and perhaps the base notion is of "worn out, good for nothing." It is noted in a British source from 1861 as a term for "a pensioner."

In Americanisms, Old and New by John Stephen Farmer, other colorful definitions emerge. Dead-beat could be (1) "A 'pick-me-up' compounded of ginger, soda, and whiskey" (I must remember that!), or (2) "A sponger, one who lives upon others." 

The Phrase Finder has a nice back'n forth on dead beat/deadbeat. Starting with the two-word version, James Briggs explains, "'Beat' is 'exhausted' in this context. 'Dead' is another example of the word used as an intensifier 'dead centre', 'dead certainty' 'dead on', 'dead ringer' etc, etc. It doesn't have an origin, but 'dead' in this sense is 100s of years old." Smokey Stover agrees and notes the single-word deadbeat can refer to a dead-stroke in a clock. (Not knowing what a dead-stroke is, I looked it up. Wiktionary's defines dead-stroke as "making a stroke without recoil; deadbeat." Smokey S then turns the Oxford English Dictionary for the more common defintion: "A worthless idler who sponges on his friends; a sponger, loafer; also (orig. Austral.), a man down on his luck."

Want more? Check out the entertaining (and extensive) post in The Word Detective, right here.

So, it appears my 1880s-era characters can use deadbeat (and the even earlier dead beat) with impunity in their dialogue and inner musings.

Thank you, Sue, for asking. :-)

If anyone has a request for a particular bit of slang or an idiom, just wing me an email or a comment, and I shall do my best to oblige... When I'm not dead beat, that is.

Dead beat or deadbeat?
"An Idle Afternoon" by Julius LeBlanc Stewart, 1884 from WikiArt

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