Meanings
- nonstandardnot comparablepossiblyrareFirst, especially first place in a competition.
Once [sic] race I came in dead first and the other dead last.
2007, Kathy Sherwin, Road Race - The Hell of the North, blogspot.com, 7 April (retrieved 20 Oct. 2010)4 more examples
But when the Great Kroger Bagoff ended the other day at the Alexandria Drive store it was 22-year-old Daniel Vichitbandha who finished dead first.
1987, "Snake tale didn't have a leg to stand on," Lexington Herald Leader (Kentucky, USA), 15 Oct. (retrieved 20 Oct 2010)When I was going through basic training in the army, we had some physical tests, running, pushups, and such like stuff, and I finished dead last by a sizable margin. We also had an intelligence test, and I finished dead first, again by a sizable margin.
1990, Isaac Asimov, “Editorial: Sharing Universes”, in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, volume 140, page 5Pittsburgh had finished second in the software firm's 1993 study, when Philadelphia also finished dead first.
1998 November 5, Len Boselovic, "Pittsburgh's Tax Bite 4th Highest of 27 Big U.S. Cities", in Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, page E-7The Rams, meanwhile, finished dead first in last year's NFL Draft.
2010 October 17, Derek Estes, “Upset Alert: Kansas City Chiefs, St. Louis Rams Bucking the Odds at Halftime”, in Bleacher Report, retrieved 20 Oct 2010Synonyms: dead last
Synonyms & antonyms
adjectiveFirst, especially first place in a competition.
Cite this entry
dead first. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/dead%20first
“dead first.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/dead%20first. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “dead first,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/dead%20first.
Source: dead first on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.