dead line—
1. an article which a shopkeeper has stopped dealing in because customers have no more interest in it:
- Silk stockings have been a dead line for years and years, Madam!
2. (also: dead wire) a cable through which no electricity passes:
- It was as if she had been calling on a dead line to an empty building.
3. a straight line:
- The equipment is designed to guide the aircraft along a localizer beam to keep it in dead line with the center of the runway.
deadline—time or date fixed in advance by which smth. must be done:
- As a journalist, I always have to work to a deadline.