How to Use dead air in a Sentence

dead air

noun
  • After the commercial, there were a few seconds of dead air before the show continued.
  • For maybe the first time in the film, there is dead air.
    Jon Caramanica, New York Times, 15 Dec. 2019
  • The guitars stop, the snare drum hits and there's dead air in the song.
    Steve Baltin, Forbes, 5 July 2022
  • Alex and Bradley were cut off mid-rant, going to dead air.
    Kate Aurthur, Variety, 23 Aug. 2021
  • Floor fans thrummed but did little more than push around the thick, dead air.
    Katharine Q. Seelye Photographs By Todd Heisler, New York Times, 21 Jan. 2018
  • If the Condor were a radio show, there would be no dead air.
    Annie Vainshtein, San Francisco Chronicle, 13 Feb. 2020
  • One key reason for all that dead air is agent skill gaps.
    Clara Shih, Forbes, 14 Oct. 2021
  • When the weekend came around and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, the two sat on the porch of their shack and talked around the dead air-conditioner.
    Thomas McGuane, The New Yorker, 3 Oct. 2022
  • Because of that, there was no dead air in which to squeeze in an analysis.
    Dallas News, 2 Jan. 2022
  • Here's how to rethink your support model to get that dead air down to 0%.
    Clara Shih, Forbes, 14 Oct. 2021
  • On the flip side, a crappy edit can lead to dead air and thoughtless cuts that dull the impact of both the picture and the story.
    Caroline Framke, Vox, 2 Apr. 2018
  • And that’s what this cheap streaming plan is perfect for: filling dead air.
    Washington Post, 20 Apr. 2021
  • The last thing family reunions want or need is dead air or awkward silence, so many are planned to the hilt.
    Richard Morgan, WSJ, 22 May 2021
  • How many times did their censors have to give us dead air time because somebody was swearing?
    Paul Daugherty, Cincinnati.com, 18 June 2018
  • The idea was to keep things flowing and fill any dead air, but as the QuikTrip trope-slicer reminds, there’s something to be said for natural rhythm.
    Vulture, 29 Jan. 2022
  • Silence, meanwhile, is typically seen as a sign that one side is stumped—dead air is for losers.
    Anne Quito, Quartz, 8 Apr. 2021
  • Hold music is engineered to fill dead air and keep people on the line until help arrives.
    Sumathi Reddy, WSJ, 24 July 2018
  • Many of us would rather talk over someone than risk an excruciating bout of dead air.
    Sara Novak, Discover Magazine, 24 July 2021
  • So that was a pricey bit of dead air about an hour in, when screens across America went unexpectedly black.
    Ellen Gray, Philly.com, 4 Feb. 2018
  • Open mouth, insert foot One problem with the 24/7 news cycle is people have to keep talking to avoid dead air on television.
    San Diego Union-Tribune, 8 Sep. 2019
  • He's allowed only two home runs to date, but pitching more often in the dead air in San Francisco no doubt helped keep that number low.
    Todd Rosiak, Journal Sentinel, 24 July 2022
  • And the score, by Daniel Lopatin, is both primal and astral, the searing noise that fills up all of the dead air (not very much, to be fair) and that serves to nudge everything else just a little bit louder.
    Jon Caramanica, New York Times, 15 Dec. 2019
  • Instead, his career has turned into the same re-run, playing in an endless loop, filling dead air on daytime TV.
    Kyle Whitmire, al, 22 Apr. 2020
  • After several seconds of dead air, Sandusky went back to calling the game as normal.
    Andrew Joseph, USA TODAY, 25 Oct. 2021
  • On opening night, there were several moments of dead air — nothing happening on stage and no music from the stage band.
    Lee Williams, OregonLive.com, 19 Feb. 2018
  • The Emmy honchos made the bizarre decision to read off the nominees, and then bring out the presenter, which added a minute or two of dead air to every award — a rookie mistake.
    Rob Sheffield, Rolling Stone, 20 Sep. 2021
  • Unfortunately, the mode features a lot of dead air with 45 seconds between rounds.
    Brittany Vincent, BGR, 22 Oct. 2021
  • The on-stage costume changes also felt uncoordinated and led to moments of dead air.
    Brandon T. Harden, Philly.com, 22 Apr. 2018
  • Renegades suffers from a pacing issue; there’s an almost unusual amount of dead air here.
    Craig Jenkins, Vulture, 9 Mar. 2021
  • After five minutes of dead air that seemed like an eternity, a robotic-sounding, disembodied voice came on the line.
    New York Times, 2 Apr. 2020

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'dead air.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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