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Examples

  • It was a dead-alive kind of place, with all the houses shut up and to be bought for very little.

    The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton 2006

  • It is a regular cathedral city, and so dead-alive, so unvisited by strangers, that I suppose it would not pay to have one.

    The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton 2006

  • There is a sort of dead-alive, hackneyed people about, who are scarcely conscious of living except in the exercise of some conventional occupation.

    Virginibus Puerisque and other papers 2005

  • No longer dead-alive, now all of the blessed dead, freed from their dreadful slavery!

    The Moon Pool 2004

  • Back they flowed until from golden doors to cavern mouth a wide lane stretched, walled on each side by the dead-alive.

    The Moon Pool 2004

  • The ‘Banks of Jordan’ was a public-house in the city, which from its appearance did not seem to do a very thriving trade; but as it was carried on from year to year in the same dull, monotonous, dead-alive sort of fashion, it must be surmised that some one found an interest in keeping it open.

    The Three Clerks 2004

  • The cavern was paved with the dead-alive, the Akka carrying them out by the hundreds, casting them into the waters.

    The Moon Pool 2004

  • The serried ranks of the dead-alive trembled, shook.

    The Moon Pool 2004

  • The ranks of the dead-alive quivered, moved, writhed, as though each felt the torment of the Thing that had enslaved them.

    The Moon Pool 2004

  • Whatever the force that, streaming from the Dweller or impregnating its lair, had energized the dead-alive, it was barrier against putrescence of any kind; that at least was certain.

    The Moon Pool 2004

Comments

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  • An interesting if not uncommon adjective containing a pair of hyphenated opposites, defined by the 1883 Encyclopaedic Dictionary as "without spirit or animation; dull, spiritless". Cf. semianimate, semianimous.

    November 15, 2012

  • Wonderful.

    share a website with you,

    -- http://clothes8.us --

    November 17, 2012