deadbeat
pronunciation
How to pronounce deadbeat in British English:
UK [ˈdedbi:t]
How to pronounce deadbeat in American English:
US ['dɛd'bit]
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- Noun:
- someone who fails to meet a financial obligation
Word Origin
- deadbeat (n.)
- "worthless sponging idler," 1863, American English slang, perhaps originally Civil War slang, from dead (adj.) + beat. Earlier used colloquially as an adjectival expression to mean "completely beaten" (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 England "dead beat" means worn out, used up. ... But here, "dead beat" is used, as a substantive, to mean a scoundrel, a shiftless, swindling vagabond. We hear it said that such a man is a beat or a dead beat. The phrase thus used is not even good slang. It is neither humorous nor descriptive. There is not in it even a perversion of the sense of the words of which it is composed. Its origin is quite beyond conjecture. ["Americanisms," in "The Galaxy," January 1878] It also was used of a kind of regulating mechanism in pendulum clocks.
Example
- 1. But he did not want to feel like a deadbeat .
- 2. My friend was not a deadbeat .
- 3. Improved deadbeat control of power quality governors .
- 4. Prosper is going to sue deadbeat borrowers .
- 5. I feel like a deadbeat bride .