My Collins Cobuild Dictionary has such definition of dead beat: “If you are dead-beat, you are very tired and have no energy left.”
I understand the meaning of this word in this question is: “lazy person who doesn’t care.”
Is my assumption wright? If so, could you please give a few more example of usage this word.
Thank you in advance!
Usually it applies to a person who reneges on his/her (finantial) obligations, does not do what is expected of him.
A dead beat dad, or just a dead-beat is a dad who fails to pay child support. It’s a very common way to refer to a no-good dad.
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Example: his dad is a dead-beat.
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Also, if you’re beat, then you’re tired.
Just a note:
In American English, deadbeat is correctly written as a single word, both as a noun and as an adjective, if you mean something similar to “a person who makes a habit of avoiding or evading his or her responsibilities or debts”, which is the intended meaning in the test question. You generally would never spell it as two words unless there were some very special reason for doing so, such as trying to achieve some kind of play on words perhaps.
If you separate the words (i.e. dead beat), that changes the meaning to something similar to “extremely tired”, just as Beeesneees mentioned. People often also say things such as “I’m dead tired.” onelook.com/?w=dead+beat&ls=a
[color=darkblue]_________________________________________ [size=75]“If you can’t beat them, arrange to have them beaten.” ~ George Carlin[/size]
Most of us here would write ‘dead beat’ as two words without a hyphen as also dead easy dead hungry dead stupid and so on and so on. I have a feeling that ‘deadbeat’ as a wastrel is also one word. Also ‘deadbeat’ as an adjective in a similar vein.
English Language Proficiency Tests, Advanced Level
