Dead Sea

(dĕd)

A salt lake, about 420 m (1,380 ft) below sea level, at the mouth of the Jordan River. It is one of the saltiest bodies of water known and is the lowest point on the surface of the earth.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Dead Sea

(Placename) a lake between Israel, Jordan, and the West Bank, now 420 m (1378 ft) below sea level; originally 390 m (1285 ft): the lowest lake in the world, with no outlet and very high salinity; outline, esp at the southern end, reduced considerably in recent years. Area: originally about 950 sq km (365 sq miles); by 2003 about 625 sq km (240 sq miles)

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

Dead′ Sea′

a salt lake between Israel and Jordan: the lowest lake in the world. ab. 390 sq. mi. (1010 sq. km); 1293 ft. (394 m) below sea level.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun

Dead Sea - a saltwater lake on the border between Israel and Jordan; its surface in 1292 feet below sea level

Israel, State of Israel, Yisrael, Zion, Sion - Jewish republic in southwestern Asia at eastern end of Mediterranean; formerly part of Palestine

Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, Jordan - an Arab kingdom in southwestern Asia on the Red Sea

Translations

Mrtvé moře

Totes Meer

Kuollutmeri

mer Morte

Мёртвое море

Dead Sea

n
the Dead Sea → la mer Mortedead weight n

(= heavy load) → poids m mort

(fig) (= burden) → poids m mortdead wood n (fig) (= people) → dinosaures mpl (= things) → vieilleries fpl, vieilles reliques fpl
a reshuffle to clear out dead wood → un remaniement pour se débarrasser des dinosaures
He has been discarded as dead wood → On l'a rejeté comme étant un dinosaure.
to be dead wood [person, thing] → avoir fait son temps

Collins English/French Electronic Resource. © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

Dead Sea

n the Dead Sea → il mar Morto

Collins Italian Dictionary 1st Edition © HarperCollins Publishers 1995

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

The Jordan, Jericho and the Dead Sea were suggested.

The lawless Bedouins in the Valley of the Jordan and the deserts down by the Dead Sea were up in arms, and were going to destroy all comers.

We had had a glimpse, from a mountain top, of the Dead Sea, lying like a blue shield in the plain of the Jordan, and now we were marching down a close, flaming, rugged, desolate defile, where no living creature could enjoy life, except, perhaps, a salamander.

Daylight came, soon after we got under way, and in the course of an hour or two we reached the Dead Sea. Nothing grows in the flat, burning desert around it but weeds and the Dead Sea apple the poets say is beautiful to the eye, but crumbles to ashes and dust when you break it.

The desert and the barren hills gleam painfully in the sun, around the Dead Sea, and there is no pleasant thing or living creature upon it or about its borders to cheer the eye.

All our reading had taught us to expect that the first plunge into the Dead Sea would be attended with distressing results--our bodies would feel as if they were suddenly pierced by millions of red-hot needles; the dreadful smarting would continue for hours; we might even look to be blistered from head to foot, and suffer miserably for many days.

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Twelve years had passed since his body had been found upon the bluff before his cottage overlooking the Hudson, and oft-times during these long years I had wondered if John Carter were really dead, or if he again roamed the dead sea bottoms of that dying planet; if he had returned to Barsoom to find that he had opened the frowning portals of the mighty atmosphere plant in time to save the countless millions who were dying of asphyxiation on that far-gone day that had seen him hurtled ruthlessly through forty-eight million miles of space back to Earth once more.

There is much which I have left out; much which I have not dared to tell; but you will find the story of his second search for Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, even more remarkable than was his first manuscript which I gave to an unbelieving world a short time since and through which we followed the fighting Virginian across dead sea bottoms under the moons of Mars.

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All that night we raced through the Barsoomian void, passing over low hills and dead sea bottoms; above long-deserted cities and populous centers of red Martian habitation upon the ribbon-like lines of cultivated land which border the globe-encircling waterways, which Earth men call the canals of Mars.

For great distances in all directions rugged hills and arid stretches of dead sea bottom discourage intercourse with them, and since there is practically no such thing as foreign commerce upon warlike Barsoom, where each nation is sufficient to itself, really little has been known relative to the court of the Jeddak of Kaol and the numerous strange, but interesting, people over whom he rules.

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The red eastern sky, the northward blackness, the salt Dead Sea, the stony beach crawling with these foul, slow-stirring monsters, the uniform poisonous-looking green of the lichenous plants, the thin air that hurts one's lungs: all contributed to an appalling effect.

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Thence the passengers could observe the vast extent of this interior sea, which is also called the Dead Sea, and into which flows an American Jordan.

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