DCHP-1 Online

deadman

• 1 n. Obs. one of two series of converging objects, such as posts, piles of turf, large upright stones, forming a funnel into which big game, such as buffalo, were driven into a pound for slaughter.

  See also: deer drive  deer hedge  watching waiter  

  • 1858  [They set up] a lane of branches of trees, which are called "dead men" to the gate or trap of the pound.
  • 1859  At one side [of a buffalo pound] an entrance is left, about ten feet wide, and from each side of this, to a distance of half a mile, a row of posts or short stumps, called deadmen, are planted, at a distance of twenty feet each, gradually widening into out the plain from the entrance.

• 2 n. any solidly fixed object to which a block and tackle can be hitched. See 1954 quote.

  • 1883  On the 25th the steamer was still aground on a sand bar and had to plant a "dead man."
  • 1923  A "dead man" is a pole driven into the bed of the lake or stream, to which block and tackle may be affixed for the purpose of hauling off the stranded vessel.
  • 1954  We got out of that mess by building a series of deadmen out into the main river on a submerged bar and then windlassing the scow up the chute from one deadman to another out into the stream. The deadmen were constructed of heavy poplar logs held down in the water by boulders and slabs of rock as large as we could carry--a "deadman" being some solid object from which a pull can be taken.
  • 1966  Turning in midstream, Capt. Simpson headed his tow upstream and nosed into the bank, where he tied on to the anchored "deadmen." These are looped cables, attached to the middle of short, squared timbers which are then planted like coffins, deep in the river bank.