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Deadbeat   Listen
noun
deadbeat, dead beat  n.  A loafer, sponger, or swindler; especially, one who does not pay his debts. Same as Beat, n., 7. (Low, U.S.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Deadbeat" Quotes from Famous Books



... and rapscallion as he was—sunshine, colour, flowers, beautiful women, life, music and laughter shook passions loose within him. Another little kink in his brain might have made a poet of him, just as the smallest turn of chance might have made a deadbeat of almost any ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson

... at the Tabard inn, where we lay all night. And the next morning, Moll's fever still unabated, we set out again a-shopping, and no rest until we caught the stage (and that by a miracle) at four; and so home, dead beat. ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett

... 'un is dead beat. Here—let me hoist you on my back, I'd as lief go to Crockton as anywhere else to-night, and I know every inch of these hills, I've been looking after cattle here since I were a babby! There ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre

... much of this excellent man. He sailed with us from Tai-o-hae to Hiva-oa, a dead beat of ninety miles against a heavy sea. It was what is called a good passage, and a feather in the Casco's cap; but among the most miserable forty hours that any one of us had ever passed. We were swung and tossed together all that time like shot ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the Hon. MICHAEL, "if there's one mistake in life that your parents grieve over, it is probably the mistake of your birth. If you don't have any serious drawbacks, and are careful of your health, you will make a first-class DEAD BEAT. When a man insults me, sir, I lay him out, without depending in the smallest degree upon an undertaker, but as for standing up in front of a man who mashes noses by contract, and chaws off ears as a matter of genteel business, why ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various

... suppose I might, though I don't quite know what difference it would have made. I beg your pardon, anyway. But I don't see why you go, either, if you are tired. Rosalie looks dead beat." She was looking at her sister in an oddly ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley

... sir, he'll do all right. Come you below and have a drop o' something, you're dead beat. There, sir, let him be a bit, and he'll talk to you fast enough. He's a tough little heart of oak, he is; let him be a ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham

... being dead beat, boiled over, and was taken off the fire. Mrs. Peerybingle then went running to the door, where, what with the wheels of a cart, the tramp of a horse, the voice of a man, the tearing in and out of an excited ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens

... now,' said Agatha, who was never discomposed. 'Come upstairs to bed at once, you are wet through. How could you walk through such a storm! Not another word till you have had something to eat. Come along—you are dead beat.' ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre

... after me. And the last I saw of her was just after I leaped a hedge and she was coming over it after me—a wonderful athletic young figure in midair silhouetted against the sky line. . . . That was the last I saw of her. I fancy she must have pulled up dead beat—or perhaps ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers

... whether you'll pay or not! Ecod! What is you? A scoundrel? A dead beat? A rascal? A ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan

... great stack of forage added to the military assets of the locality, and the brigadier just looked at the water and the lawn, and said, "A land flowing with milk and honey,—this is where I shall camp. I could not resist camping in such a spot even if I had old man De Wet dead beat a furlong from home!" And it was indeed an entrancing spot to the Karoo-worn warrior. Just one of those delightful oases which do exist, but which do not abound in Cape Colony. Upon them stand the best and oldest farms, for when the forebears of the ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer

... Dead Beat. adj. Reaching its reading quickly; applied to instruments having a moving indicator, which normally would oscillate back and forth a number of times before reaching its reading were it not prevented by damping. (See ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... I happened to come along," said the stranger. "You an' Sampson'd ha' both been drownded. That Chow couldn't haul him up. Dead beat the Chow was when I came. I jis' come ridin' up, thinkin' to get a few pound of onions to take out to the camp, and I see the Chow a-haulin' and a-haulin' at that windlass like as if he was tryin' to pull the bottom out of the well. I rides up and sings out "What ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson

... wake the village if we can help it, Tawaina; but I do not see any chance of escaping without a fight. Our horses are all dead beat, and the Indians will easily overtake us, even if we get a ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty

... Amelia, what's up now? Leading old Sambo, too, I vow, And him dead beat. Where have you been? "Bolted with Jim! What do you mean?" "Met the old man with Sambo licked From running old Bowneck." "Well, I'm kicked— Ran 'em till Sambo nearly dropped? What did Jim do when you were stopped? Did you bolt ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson

... met the Company Commander's over the table, and he shrugged his shoulders slightly. "Dead beat." His lips framed the words, and he returned to the contemplation of his cigar, which was not doing all that a ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile

... him. I was that chilled in my drippin' clothes, the second swim did me more good than harm. When I got to the Early and Late, though, I was pretty dead beat, and it cost me half a dozen tries before I could heave myself on to the accommodation-ladder. Hows'ever, once on board I had a strip and a good rub-down, and tumbled to bed glowin' ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... degrees 2 minutes South longitude 123 degrees 11 minutes East. Today we may be said to have cleared the land after a dead beat to the westward, between the Sahul Bank and the islands of Timor and Rottee. It took us eleven days to make good less than 300 miles. The land was in sight during the greater portion of this time, and we had a good ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... dead beat and going very slow, flopping along, and looked as if she would tumble head over heels any second. We were close ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson

... that have come directly to us from England may be mentioned "throw up the sponge," "draw it mild," "give us a rest," "dead beat," "on the shelf," "up the spout," "stunning," "gift of the ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin

... other, so challenged, answered, "When we were perishing of cold and there was a great depth of snow." Xenophon said: "Upon my word, with weather such as you describe, when our provisions had run out, when the wine could not even be smelt, when numbers were dropping down dead beat, so acute was the suffering, with the enemy close on our heels; certainly, if at such a season as that I was guilty of outrage, I plead guilty to being a more outrageous brute than the ass, which is too wanton, they say, to feel fatigue. Still, ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon

... no canon, sir," said Griggs sharply. "The poor brutes are all dead beat; they've come to something that they can nibble, and they've struck work. The ponies are at it too. It's as good as saying that they won't stir another peg till daylight, if ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn

... going with you. If I go anywhere it will be up to Rosenthal's. I'm getting worried. It's after three o'clock now. She's got no money to get anything to eat. She'll come home dead beat out if she's ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith

... Stop there! So we finished our conversation on the landing. The next day, I mustered assurance enough to knock at his door, having a pretext ready.—No answer.—Knock again. A door, as if of a cabinet, was shut softly and locked, and presently I heard the peculiar dead beat of his thick-soled, misshapen boots. The bolts and the lock of the inner door were unfastened,—with unnecessary noise, I thought,—and he came into the passage. He pulled the inner door after him and opened the outer one at which I stood. He had on a flowered silk ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... gas in the passage, or even to look into the room where we were, but went straight up to bed, making a terrible noise. I asked him to come down for a moment, and he begged to be excused, as he was "dead beat," an observation that was scarcely consistent with the fact that, for a quarter of an hour afterwards, he was positively dancing in his room, and shouting out, "See me dance the polka!" or ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith

... Moggy's dead beat, I'm afraid. Neither of us could sleep a wink last night for the dust and sand. Well, it's all well that ends well. We'll cool her off in the valley. How is everything going on there? Mrs. Templestowe all right, and Mrs. Page, and the children? I declare," stretching ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge

... brought home three bears and four deer. "How did you do it?" asked the envious multitude. "I was asleep in my wigwam, was waked up by a rumpus outside, rushed out with my gun, and chased the crowd around the hut till I was dead beat, then I bent my rifle across my knee into the exact circumference shape of my house, and fired. The bullet whistled by me for half an hour, chasing the varmints who were chasing each other; bum by, the bullet caught up, went through the whole crowd, and by gum; that 'ere bullet ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... he not broken the bridge over the Marne at La Ferte-sous-Jouarre, and thereby delayed the Emperor thirty-six hours, he would probably have been crushed before he could cross the River Aisne. His men were dead beat by marching night and day over roads first covered by snow and now deep in slush: for a week they had had no regular rations, and great was their joy when, at the close of the 2nd, they drew near to the 42,000 troops that Buelow ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... might tender congratulations. He wanted to see the boy that had ridden Lauzanne, also—wanted to take his hand and tell him what a grand race he had ridden. But Dixon had been ready with excuses; the boy was dead beat after the race—he was only a kid—and had gone to Dixon's home. Miss Porter was perhaps in the stand, or perhaps she had gone home also. Crane knew of Langdon's objection. It was a silly thing, he said, due to overeagerness. He had taken no part in it, he assured Dixon. Alan Porter, too, ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... clawed his mouth free. "I got some dogs out there—dead beat," he said huskily. "Somebody go and take care of them, and I'll tell ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... you? I am so sorry about your journey; you must be dead beat. What a fool Bates was to make such a mistake." He was looking about the room as he spoke. "I ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron

... "The poor brutes are dead beat," said he. "All the spurs in Poitou wouldn't get them on a league. The night will be pitch dark, too, and, above all, Madame and Mademoiselle would be killed. They have already been on horseback all day—and so they were yesterday: it is quite ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... end to the poor brute's sufferings. The others trudged wearily after us, making but slow progress, but doing better than I had conceived possible of animals that had not eaten or drank for thirty-six hours. But morning found them dead beat; they stood stock still as the sun rose, and neither coaxing nor flogging could get the poor brutes a step farther. According to Inyati's reckoning we were still four hours from the water, and it was obvious that once we left them we could ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell

... before that," returned the first speaker; "and how about that dead beat of a half-nephew who borrowed twenty dollars of Yuba Bill on the way down, and then wanted to get off at Shootersvilie, but Bill wouldn't let him, and scooted him down to Spindler's and collected the money from Spindler himself ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... safely dismount. It is getting pitch dark, and we will lead our horses. I can feel that mine is nearly dead beat. In a few minutes we will halt, and give them half a gourd full of water, each. After that, we had better go on for another six or seven miles, so as to be well out of sight ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty

... started in a new place, below the wire, and hoping to work up to it. It was perhaps lucky I had so bad a cutlass, and my smarting hand bid me stay before I had got up to the wire, but just in season, so that I was only the better of my activity, not dead beat as yesterday. ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... as if they would prevent the flight of the horse, but John urged on his waning spirit and he dashed over the moat and through the wall into the inner precincts of the castle yard, where the animal stopped dead beat ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler

... "A dead beat; but you don't play any of your games on me, young man. I've cut my eye-teeth, I have. You don't swindle me out of a fifty-cent breakfast quite so easily. Here, John, ...
— The Young Outlaw - or, Adrift in the Streets • Horatio Alger

... about twenty miles from the mainland, with a dead beat to it, I decided to seek for a position more accessible to New Guinea, and as I had not a teacher to spare for this little island, Mr. McFarlane decided to leave two of the Loyalty Island teachers here. It is fertile, and appears healthy, is ...
— Adventures in New Guinea • James Chalmers

... bit of it! I was dead beat with the struggle and with screaming for you, but please don't imagine that I am going to faint or treat you to a display of hysteria now that all the excitement has ended. I admit that I cried a little when you pushed me aside ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... galling poverty, and utter failure. He has been subjected to ridicule and the even more blighting cruelty of good-natured, patronizing, contemptuous tolerance. His reputation is that of a lazy, good-for-nothing, disreputable dead beat and loafer. And yet, in a sense, nothing is further from the truth. Notwithstanding his many disappointments, no one could have been more sincere than he in believing that just around ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb

... wanted—Jubber being too stingy to pay the regular people who understand such things. The young woman, knowing as she did about fancy work, was just what was wanted, if she could only get well enough to use her needle. 'I'll see she works the money out,' says Peggy; 'but she's dead beat to-night, and must have her rest and bit o' supper, before she begins to-morrow.' Jubber wanted to give less than ten shillings; but between threatening, and saying it should buy twenty shillings' worth of tailor's work, she got the better of him. And ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... the lives of a number of other people as well as your own depend on your keeping extremely wide awake, when you are dead beat and have to fight against the strongest possible inclination to doze even as you walk about, is really no light trial of fortitude, though it is not reckoned amongst the hardships of campaigning. But if you are within sight of your ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough

... he said. "I could almost wish she had made good her escape. She got out, Heaven alone knows how, to see her child, which she had heard was ill. But the ground she must have covered in the time! She was absolutely dead beat when she was taken. And she was not in her prison clothes. That is so inexplicable. How she got others she alone knows. Some one must have befriended her, and given them to her—some one very poor, for she was miserably clad, and the extraordinary thing is that though ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley

... with people who go over houses, Mr. Guppy and his friend are dead beat before they have well begun. They straggle about in wrong places, look at wrong things, don't care for the right things, gape when more rooms are opened, exhibit profound depression of spirits, and are clearly knocked up. In each successive chamber that they enter, Mrs. Rouncewell, ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... night, both of the existing machine-gun emplacements and of the entire ground, with a view to changing our positions. It was a long time before I finally left the trenches and started off across the desolate expanse to the Douve farm, and I was dead beat when I arrived there. On getting into the big room I found the Colonel, who had just come in. "Where's that right-hand gun of yours, Bairnsfather?" he asked. "Down on the right of Number 2 trench, sir," I answered; "just by the two willows near ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather

... cutlass, and haversack, back over the Doubloon and into the wilds of Manzanilla, to settle certain disputed squatter claims, and otherwise enforce the law; and now the night had fallen, and he was not yet home. However, he rode up at last, dead beat, with a strong touch of his old swamp-fever, and having had an adventure, which had like to have proved his last. For as he rode through the Doubloon at low tide in the morning, he espied in the surf that river-god, or Jumby, of which I spoke just ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... one of the quiet cows followed up the old mare that was walking step by step forward, and all the rest followed her like sheep. Cattle will do that. I've seen a stockrider, when all the horses were dead beat, trying to get fat cattle to take a river in flood, jump off and turn his horse loose into the stream. If he went straight, and swam across, all the cattle ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood

... mounted men had made in the relief of Kimberley have been already recorded. They arrived there on Thursday with their horses dead beat. They were afoot at three o'clock on Friday morning, and two brigades out of three were hard at work all day in an endeavour to capture the Dronfield position. Yet when on the same evening an order came that French should start again instantly from ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... society, bandied from one person to the other, to make the same bows, extend the same hand to be grasped, and reply to the same eternal questions; until, like a man borne down by sleep after long vigils, and at each moment roused to reply, you either are not aware of what you do say, or are dead beat into an unmeaning smile. Since I have been in this country, I have suffered this to such a degree as at last to become quite nervous on the subject; and I might reply in the words of the spirit summoned ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... Guelders—but there was no chance for me. But this summer, as we were marching here, not a man of us except the Duke himself, with a notion why we were coming this way at all, we stopped to storm the Schellenberg, a hill overlooking the Danube near Donauwoerth. We were all dog tired—dead beat, in fact, for we had marched till we were almost blind. However, as it was the Duke's, day, he set us ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead

... vanishing covert or hollow, out of which Darrell had to entice him, sure that, in return, Fairthorn would take a sly occasion to send into his side a vindictive prickle. But as the two came home in the starlight, the dogs dead beat and poor Fairthorn too,—ten to one but what the musician was leaning all his weight on his master's nervous arm, and Darrell was looking with tender kindness in the face of the SOMEONE left ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... without a check—such a pace!" and care little whether the finale be "killed" or "broke away," and those of older fashion, who prefer "long day, you know, steady as old time, the beauties stuck like wax through fourteen parishes as I live; six hours if it were a minute; horses dead beat; positively walked, you know, no end of a day!" but must have the fatal "who-whoop" as conclusion—both of these, the "new style and the old," could not but be content with the doings of the "Demoiselles" from start ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... little chits. Father used to get up at daybreak and work away after dark always when he was at home. On Sunday mornings after he'd seen to the things he used to lie on his back under that tree in front if it was fine or about the house if it was wet, just dead beat. He used to put a handkerchief over his face but he didn't sleep much. He just rested. In the afternoon he used to have a smoke and a read. Poor father! He was always thought queer, you recollect, because he didn't care for newspapers ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller

... quick! And you, Hosken, catch hold of the mare and lead her round to Miss Belcher's stables. Or, stay—she's dead beat. You can help me slip her out of the shafts and tether her by the gate yonder. That's right, man; but don't tie her up too tight. Give her room to bite a bit of grass, and she'll wait here quiet ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... will you give me an' my wife a lift as far as Engleton? We've been on tramp this last week, an' we're both dead beat." ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur

... "Humph! A dead beat!" muttered the clerk. "He put the magazines inside to make the valise feel as if it was filled with clothing. It's an old game. Be intended to leave without paying his bill. I wish you had ...
— The Rover Boys in New York • Arthur M. Winfield

... "I'm dead beat," said the hotel-keeper under his breath, "if I ever seed anything like that!" But with the ready suspicion of a prudent householder he questioned her. Where had the man come by the wound? For they saw the blood-stained ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall

... night we arrived at a little inn. The beds were not made, and, knowing how long it took a Finn to accomplish anything of the kind, we begged her to be as quick as possible, as we were dead beat. She pulled out the wooden bed, she thumped the mattress, and at last she went away, we hoped and believed to fetch the sheets. She remained absent for some time, but when she returned it was not with the sheets; it was with what to her mind was far more important, viz., ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... platform. The train arrived; stopped; the doors were thrown open, and from one of them emerged Mr. Rigby! Coningsby, who had dined, was greatly tempted to take off his hat and make him a bow, but he refrained. Their eyes met. Rigby was dead beat. He was evidently used up; a man without a resource; the sight of Coningsby his last blow; he had ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli

... was any one here," he said, in a hoarse, panting whisper. "The police are after me. I have fought for an hour, and run over a mile, and I'm dead beat—I can go no farther. Let me hide in the back room, and tell them you haven't seen ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... side, She took the bit free and untiring as yet; Her neck was arched double, her nostrils were wide, And the tips of her tapering ears nearly met— "You're lighter than I am," said Alec at last; "The horse is dead beat and the mare isn't blown. She must be a good one—ride on and ride fast, You know your way now." So I rode ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... individually and collectively as everything he could think of, and only stopped to scratch his big bushy head to figure out some new condemnations. While doing this he saw me coming from the port side, and forthwith he told me to take charge of the ship, as he was dead beat out and would have to soak his head again before coming on watch. He smelled horribly of stale liquor, and his eyes were bloodshot. I thought he would be just as well off below, so I made no protest against ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains

... "that's all very well if—if you haven't got the fever yourself. There, you need say nothing about it, nobody would be of any use to me to-night, and it may be only that I am dead beat." ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... to be fed and rested; he was dead beat when I led him into the unlocked stable, and when I had seen to him I meant to rouse up Billy Jones and tell him all the ugly stuff I had unearthed—and seen too—for the killing of four innocent men was hot in ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones

... us that night. I threw open the door of the bedroom next to mine, and went and locked myself into my own room. He was dead beat with roaming the streets, without a penny in his pocket, all day long. The bed to lie on was all ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins

... you worry—'tain't no use"—and Priscilla lit two bedroom candles, giving Innocent one—"You just go up to bed and think of nothing till the morning. Mister Jocelyn is dead beat and put out about something—precious 'ungry too, for he ate his food as though he hadn't 'ad any all day. You couldn't expect him to be pleasant ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli

... hold him if he means to go, I quite admit. But I haven't much faith in his keeping on the straight, and that's a fact. I don't like his going back to the hut, and I'd have prevented it if I'd known. But I slept in the sitting-room last night, and I was dead beat. He ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell

... A.M. three Canadian privates blundered against our village and tripped over it. They had lost their way, were mud from hoofs to horns, dead beat, soaked to the skin, chilled to the bone, fed up to the back teeth. They were not going any further, neither were they going to be deluged to death if there was any cover to be had anywhere. They ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various

... heels. If he had not, from utter weariness, cried out after a time, I should have followed the track straight, unceasing, over the four leagues and more to the Sacondaga. As it was, I had presently to stop and retrace my steps to where he sat on a wayside stump, dead beat. ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic

... told me he was not popular in the village for two reasons. The capitalistic storekeepers called him a dead beat and the church people had rotten-egged him for a speech he had made denouncing religion. I saw by his hands that he didn't work much, and from the hands of his wife I learned who raised the watermelons ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis

... position. The kangaroo was now approaching the foot of the long, even, uninteresting range of the Darling Hills; his pace was slow, he made his leaps with difficulty, and would soon have been caught, had not poor Tip been equally dead beat. ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor

... humiliated and abashed. Also he had caroused in his time—who was there in those first days at Kimberley and on the Rand who did not carouse, when life was so hard, luck so uncertain, and food so bad; when men got so dead beat, with no homes anywhere—only shake-downs and the Tents of Shem? Once he had had a native woman summoned to be his slave, to keep his home; but that was a business which had revolted him, and he had never repeated the experiment. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... sew me up altogether, when, O joyful sound! a faint cry from H., who is some distance ahead, comes back to us. "Hurrah! here's the top!" Panting and exhausted, we at length reach the summit, and throw ourselves on the ground dead beat. ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt

... I wish I could return the compliment, but his chestnut balked shamefully, and came home dead beat!" ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming

... became fascinated. There was something so barbarous—heathenish—in what he beheld. The minutes flew by, and the dance was rapidly nearing its height. More couples fell out, dead beat and gasping, but still there remained a number who would fight it out to the bitter end. The streaming faces and gaping lips of those yet remaining told of the dreadful strain. Another couple dropped out, the woman actually falling with exhaustion. She was dragged aside and left ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... replied Hervey, with an air of relief. "You understand what it is for a man to need rest. I'll just hang around till the folks come, and then sneak off to bed. You don't mind, Prue, do you? I'm dead beat, and I ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum

... did," declared the guide. "He must have slipped away. Maybe he's gone into the house. You'd better come in yourself. The women folks will 'tend to you. Why, Miss, you're dead beat!" ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson

... "You would for a dead beat, though," suggested the devoted servant, who by virtue of five years of service knew whereof he spoke, "if he'd ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond

... said, when he had lit the candle and seen that it burned safely; "Missie, yer jest dead beat, you has never sat down, looking fur the little chap the whole, whole day. I'm a great strong fellow, I ain't tired a bit; but ef Missie 'ud lie down, maybe she'd sleep, and I'll stay outside and watch fur little Maurice and ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade

... be kept afloat till we should reach our own harbour. We were now laying well up for the cape, though we were making what sailors call "very bad weather of it;" but, should the wind shift a little, and come more ahead, we might have a dead beat of several hours before us. We saw the skipper looking out anxiously at the reef I have described. A considerable portion, even at the highest tides, was several feet above water, and easily accessible. As the rock also afforded a shelter to numerous seafowl, ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston

... said the poor Mole, "I'm dreadfully sorry, but I'm simply dead beat and that's a solid fact. You must let me rest here a while longer, and get my strength back, if I'm to ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame

... and there be always some ill fall upon him who does first clap eyes on't and set the hounds on its scent. On this very day did some then present give chace and followed for ower three good hours while baith men, horses and hounds were all dead beat and just when they did aim for to claim its brush one Holliday fell from his horse and brake his neck, and he it was who had first set een on't. They were then close upon Chop Yatt ower forty mile by the course they had run. It was then brought to mind that one Blades ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home

... the imp, stoutly, with his arms akimbo—"and why not? Don't you see that the poor boy is dead beat; and was I goin' to stand by and see him faint by his-self; ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne

... prairie! I was almost froze with skeer; But we rousted up some torches, And sarched for 'em far and near. At last we struck hosses and wagon, Snowed under a soft white mound, Upsot, dead beat, but of little Gabe No hide nor ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... it deserved to the narrative with which the officer favored us en route, of how he had been gradually getting the clew to the fugitive's many doublings and disguises till he came upon his retreat at last. "They mostly make for home when they're dead beat," he remarked, alluding to Bruce's having selected London as ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... a feeble attempt at a trot, but the poor brutes of horses were dead beat, and neither the pressure of public opinion nor the suggestive cracking of the driver's whip could ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse

... not been, that upon that precinct Shorter was the ascent than on the other, He I know not, but I had been dead beat. ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri

... the prairie! I was almost froze with skeer; But we rousted up some torches, And sarched for 'em far and near. At last we struck hosses and wagon, Snowed under a soft white mound, Upsot, dead beat,—but of little Gabe No hide nor hair ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester

... himself in the High Street, did not openly canvass with Randal, yet when the reports were brought in to him, and he saw the names of the voters who gave one vote to Audley, and withheld the other from Randal, he would say to Randal, dead beat as that young gentleman was, "Slip out with me, the moment dinner is over, and before you go the round of the public-houses; there are some voters we must get for you to-night." And sure enough a few ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... no notice o' me, Master Nic," he said hoarsely. "Just put an oar over the ztarn and keep her head ztraight. Zhe'll go down fast enough. We ought to row up to fetch that fish we left, but we couldn't do it, zir; for I'm dead beat trying to ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn

... I don't know,' exclaimed Pepito; 'I am at my wits' end. If he is not, I have been working in the dark, and he has deceived me with a false pretext; I am at a loss—dead beat. But one thing is plain—I can make four ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various

... Porter, leaving me with that orphaned sort of feeling which a luggageless Englishman experiences; it is pouring cats and dogs; I am dead beat; I creep into the dark omnibus. I find myself quite alone. I wait impatiently—a quarter of an hour—twenty-five minutes—still no Porter; I am famished; to distract myself, I peer through the door, whence I can discern the messy vista of the railway-station in the rain; it's lucky I do so; for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various

... long, weary sigh she began, without raising her head from her hand as she sat leaning on the counter, "Whether you're right or wrong, I'm too badly used up to quarrel with you or to answer in any such gunpowdery fashion. I'm dead beat, but I thought I'd like to come in and see you all once more, and my old place, and who was standing in it. You are at the beginning, my pert one. If I was as young and strong as you I wouldn't come and ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... then Saint Munchausen presides over the mahogany where fox-hunting feats are discussed. One use of a lash is to lead a horse by putting it through the rings of the snaffle, and to flip him up as you stand on the bank when he gets stuck fast, or dead beat in a ditch or brook. I once owed the extrication of my horse from a brook with a deep clay bottom entirely to having a long lash to my whip; for when he had plumped in close enough to the opposite bank for me to escape over his ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey

... easily have killed him if my gun," etc., till every one, sleepy and tired, had no more conversation to exchange, and the Duke left, as he said, to write letters, and we simpler mortals did not mind saying that we were dead beat and went ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone

... While I blinked in the glare, the mizzen-mast crashed overside. I cannot tell whether the lightning struck and split it, or whether, already blasted by the explosion, it had stood upright for those few seconds until a heave of the swell snapped the charred stays and released it. Nay, even the dead beat of ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... yacht than his own. The race was plain sailing, with a free wind nearly all the way, and there was not much room for the exercise of superior skill in handling the craft. At least, this was Ned's opinion. If the course had been a dead beat to windward for ten miles, the case would have been different; and Ned had failed to notice that he had lost half the distance between the Skylark and the Sea Foam when he rounded ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic

... have been to his quarters; he rode out at daybreak, and has not returned. My horse is dead beat, and as the direction the general took is not exactly known, I think it better to wait his coming than to follow him. Meanwhile, cousin, a cup of chocolate will be no unwelcome refreshment ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... allowed to leave off dancing at the same time as the Duchesse de Bourgogne. One morning, at Marty, wishing to escape too early, the Duchess caused me to be forbidden to pass the doors of the salon; several of us had the same fate. I was delighted when Ash Wednesday arrived; and I remained a day or two dead beat, and Madame de Saint-Simon could not get ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... I had to strip you, and I've done everything. The skipper's dead beat, and if Bob couldn't steer we should be in a pickle. Let me put you in a hot blanket now, and you'll have some grog." Then, with his own queer humour, Lewis Ferrier said, "Tom, all this is only a lesson. If we'd had a proper boat, a proper lift for sick men, and a proper vessel to lift them ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman

... busy now, I reckon Dave could use him," Bob said. "I reckon he needs a li'l' attention. Then I'm ready for grub an' a sleep twice round the clock. If any one asks me, I'm sure enough dead beat. I don't ever want to look ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine

... soon got tired. The sleepers were a long way apart, and the track between frightfully rough. I walked for hours without seeing the slightest sign of a station or a break in the woods, and finally I sat down dead beat. My feet were all blisters, and I felt that I couldn't walk another yard. Fortunately it was a warm night, and I made up my mind to crawl under the bracken just inside the wood and go to sleep. I found a comfortable ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... McKnutt reported, was full of expectancy. Messages were pouring in over the wires. The men at the telephones were dead beat, ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh

... his visitor. While the man eagerly devoured his food, and washed it down with a cup of tea, Mr. Belcher went to his room, and wrote an order on his tailor for a suit of clothes, and a complete respectable outfit for the legal "dead beat" who was feasting himself below. When he descended, he handed him the paper, and gave him money for a bath ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland

... to have its effect on me, and McLean and I were both tired out; we were dead beat and looked around for a quiet spot where we could rest. Billy McLean was my especial pal ever since I had ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant

... five-knot current against one," she exclaimed, as, dropping down into out big arm-chair and undoing her bonnet-strings and the red handkerchief she wore round her neck, she threw her bonnet over the back of her head. "I'm dead beat with to-day's work, and shall be worse to-morrow. Now, my dear, what I've got to say is this, I want you to help me. You know the trade as well as I do. It will be a good thing for you as well as for me; for look you, my dear, if anything should happen to your Jack, ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston

... the prairie! I was almost froze with skeer; But we rousted up some torches, And searched for 'em far and near. At last we struck hosses and wagon, Snowed under a soft white mound, Upsot, dead beat—but of little Gabe No hide nor hair ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... of the bowlers? The airy young Barnacle replied that they grew tired, got dead beat, got lamed, got their backs broken, died off, gave it up, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... but you will see she has as much as she can carry before long. It's all the better to make all snug before starting; it saves a lot of trouble afterwards, and the extra canvas would not have made ten minutes' difference to us at the outside. We shall have pretty nearly a dead beat down the Solent. Fortunately tide will be running strong with us, but there will be a nasty kick-up there. You will see we shall feel the short choppy seas there more than we shall when we get outside. She is a grand boat in a really heavy sea, but in short waves she ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty

... you have come and in health," he remarked, as though we were old friends. He assured me of my welcome, and said his village had a guest-house that would serve instead of the tent. Methought he protested too much, but knowing that men and mules were dead beat, and that we had a long way to go, I told Salam that the guest-house would serve, and the headman lead the way to a tapia building that would be called a very small barn, or a large fowl-house, in England. A tiny clay lamp, in which a cotton wick consumed some mutton fat, revealed a corner of the ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan

... at the girl again from where he stood; "No, miss," he answered, "I think not. She's dead beat after a long tramp. The soles are wore off her shoes. Or likely she's fainted. It's a pity of her," he added for the relief of his own feelings, looking at ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... the secretary. "No, no, my dear fellow, you are dead beat; the stake is worth playing for, and don't suppose we are such flats as to lose the race for want of jockeying. Your humbugging registration will never do against a new reign. Our great men mean to shell out, I tell you; ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... to such tomfoolery for one," replied Tommy. "I'm dead beat." He went and sat down doggedly on the main hatch. "You got us on; get us off again," ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... keep well out of sight of chance wanderers, to dodge farmhouses, to dart across highroads when nobody is looking. And so tear-smeared and mud-bespattered up the long rise of darkening Crouch End Lane, where to-night the electric light blazes from a hundred shops, and dead beat into the Seven Sisters Road station, there to tear off its soaked jersey; and then home to Poplar, with shameless account of the jolly afternoon that it has spent, of the admiration and the praise that it ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... far I went. Every yard I covered, my feet dragged more. I was dead beat, inside and out. I had neither strength nor courage left. And within there was that frightful craving, which was as though it shrieked aloud. I leant against some palings, dazed and giddy. If only death ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh

... and flushing it, Hitting and stopping, advance and retreat, For taking and giving, for sparring and rushing it, And will ne'er say enough, till he's down right dead beat; No crossing for him, true courage and bottom all, You'll find him a rum un, try on if you can; You shy-cocks, he shows 'em no favour, 'od rot 'em all, When he fights he trys to accomplish his man; With giving and taking, and flooring and flushing, With hitting and stopping, huzza ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer

... the Embassy and hustle a bit. If the wheels can be hurried, they shall be, I assure you. Then I'll go on to Benzonana, get your petrol, and come straight back. Meanwhile take my advice and have a sleep, like your man there. You look dead beat, and no wonder. Why, I ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang

... did we sail, and on the tenth day our native land showed on the horizon. We got so close in that we could see the stubble fires burning, and I, being then dead beat, fell into a light sleep, for I had never let the rudder out of my own hands, that we might get home the faster. On this the men fell to talking among themselves, and said I was bringing back gold and silver in the sack that Aeolus had given me. 'Bless my heart,' would one turn to his ...
— The Odyssey • Homer

... dead beat and utterly tired out from a second unsuccessful search for the Captain. The floe is of enormous extent, for though we have traversed at least twenty miles of its surface, there has been no sign of its coming to an end. The frost has been so severe of late that the overlying snow is frozen as hard ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... any fear of the enemy. We walked twenty miles last night from Union Grove to the river, then I walked to the boat, back to the farm and then back to the boat again—that's three more miles—and we have gone another twenty now. I am pretty nearly dead beat, ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty

... ye can!"— [with a sort of exaltation]his principles are but his belly. "Oh, but," Thomas says, "a man can be pure and honest, just and merciful, and take off his hat to Nature!" I tell you Nature's neither pure nor honest, just nor merciful. You chaps that live over the hill, an' go home dead beat in the dark on a snowy night—don't ye fight your way every inch of it? Do ye go lyin' down an' trustin' to the tender mercies of this merciful Nature? Try it and you'll soon know with what ye've got to deal. 'T es only by that—[he strikes a blow with his clenched fist]—in Nature's ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... earth), where, judging from the samples shown me, there is a deposit of fine white silicious earth, which is purified in Manila and used as paint. I did not reach the place, as the guide whom I had with difficulty obtained, pretended, after a couple of miles, to be dead beat. From the inquiries I made, however, I apprehend that it is a kind of solfatara. Several deposits of it appear to exist at the foot ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... wind enough, pulling off his hat and mopping at his face, all spattered with dirt and lined with sweat, from which went up a thick steam into the still, cold air. "I told you how it would be. What a thick I was to come! Here we are, dead beat, and yet I know we're close to the run in, if ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes

... "we'd better move in a bit out o' sight o' de mainland, an' look fer a place to make camp. I reckon we'd orter rest here for a few days till we git in shape ag'in. I know youse must be dead beat, an' I sure am, ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... considered. But a gal kin be won when she takes a fancy to a man of your make-up. The trouble'll be with her dad, an' don't fergit that. But thar, I guess we've talked enough about this fer the present. I'm dead beat an' want some sleep. We must be away early ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody

... We're partners, prospecting,—been down towards the Sonora line. For the Lord's sake, gentlemen, don't keep us out here. We've lost everything we had,—packs, packers, and grub. We're about dead beat for a drink and something ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King

... questions. They therefore struck upon a country lane and, keeping among the hills, crossed the main road between Bertrich and Wittlech; and slept in a copse, near Dudeldf. They had walked five-and-thirty miles, and were so dead beat that even the cold did not ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty

... 'as the right o' way. They ain't 'ad no rest, an' they're all slathered in mud, likely, an' dead beat fer sleep. Incomin' troops is fresh, an' they stands to one side to ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall

... a top, for I was dead beat; but two or three times I awoke with a tremendous start under the impression that I was falling. I've always found it so when obliged to spend the night in the branches of a tree. Did you ever sleep so, ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne

... office where you get your ticket, along by all the way stations and through the mountain passes, you are assured that Mr. Liedig, the hotel keeper of Yosemite, is the poet and Christian, and that J.M. Hutchings aforesaid is a nobody, a blower, a dead beat, the chief impediment to the interests of Yosemite—or, to use a ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage

... would like fine to see you on the tug: ten years older both of us than the last time you came to welcome Fanny and me to England. If we have money, however, we shall do a little differently: send the CASCO away from Honolulu empty of its high- born lessees, for that voyage to 'Frisco is one long dead beat in foul and at last in cold weather; stay awhile behind, follow by steamer, cross the States by train, stay awhile in New York on business, and arrive probably by the German Line in Southampton. ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... remain. Factions are hard to reconcile: Prate not of Law and Order—by the main! There is a fussiness worse than death Trouble on trouble, pain on pain, Lost labour, and sheer waste of breath, Sore task to hearts dead beat by many wars, And ears grown dumb with listening ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 29, 1891 • Various

... of a long knife in its sheath. It went swiftly through his mind that those who sent him on this errand should have warned him of the size of the quarry. Suddenly, almost without his own volition, he found himself saying: "I ask your pardon. I was dead beat an' fair famished, an' I crawled in ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden

... drop under us if we don't give them an hour or two," he said, quietly. "They 're both dead beat." ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... but Attakapas caught him in the retreat, and rolled him over like a ball. Over and over again this rolling over was enacted, and finally, after more than an hour, bruin curled himself up on his back, bruised, bloody, and dead beat. The thing was up with California, and Attakapas was declared the victor amidst the applause of the multitude ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown

... "You look dead beat," he said later on, in his own particular and untidy den, as he carefully stuffed the bowl of his pipe. "I think it would go better with you, old chap, if you did not hold yourself in quite so tight. I don't want you to rave or commit suicide in some untidy fashion, ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer

... hoarsely. "You, Tom Bodger—Master Aleck? Here, quick, sir; for the love of heaven save a poor fellow! It's the press-gang. Got five on us. Help, sir! Shove off with me. I'm too dead beat ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn

... direction of the Upper Au Sable Pond. I do not know her exact course through this maze of mountains, swamps, ravines, and frightful wildernesses. I only know that the poor thing worked her way along painfully, with sinking heart and unsteady limbs, lying down "dead beat" at intervals, and then spurred on by the cry of the remorseless dogs, until, late in the afternoon, she staggered down the shoulder of Bartlett, and stood upon the shore of the lake. If she could put that piece of water between her and her pursuers, she would be safe. Had she strength ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner



Words linked to "Deadbeat" :   defaulter, debtor, debitor



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