How to Use dead-end in a Sentence

dead-end

1 of 3 adjective
  • Many of those victims were found on Boes’ dead-end street.
    Emily Lippiello, ABC News, 9 May 2024
  • There doesn’t seem to be any good reason for it, because this is a little dead-end street that goes to the ocean.
    Steven Strogatz, Quanta Magazine, 31 May 2023
  • The two bodies were discovered this year in front of the last house on a dead-end road in Columbus, Georgia.
    Tim Stelloh, NBC News, 20 June 2023
  • Millions find themselves in this predicament, left to settle for a dead-end job or worse.
    Rick Wartzman, Fortune, 14 Dec. 2023
  • Yet such an exchange might turn the Gaza war away from its catastrophic, dead-end course, at least for a time.
    Steve Coll, The New Yorker, 30 Oct. 2023
  • After waiting for the car to make it safely through the zone, the sergeant attempted to pull over the driver, who pulled onto a dead-end street.
    Thallman, oregonlive, 16 June 2023
  • Wasting time on dead-end projects won’t satisfy your soul.
    Eugenia Last, The Mercury News, 21 Feb. 2024
  • Our own home is located on a dead-end street with only six houses.
    Liz Logan, Charlotte Observer, 31 Jan. 2024
  • The post by the Humane Society said that late Wednesday night, three 8-week-old pointer/hound mix puppies were thrown from a car to the side of a dead-end road.
    Democrat-Gazette Staff From Wire Reports, arkansasonline.com, 26 Feb. 2024
  • In the film, Perry plays Mike O’Donnell, a down-on-his-luck middle-aged father with a dead-end job, two kids who hate him and a wife who has just filed for divorce.
    Stephanie Wenger, Peoplemag, 2 Nov. 2023
  • Her family loves their dead-end street and the easy commute into Boston, but the home was small, with low-slung 7-foot ceilings.
    Kara Baskin, BostonGlobe.com, 7 June 2023
  • That sound continues on Grog, where Frog sing stories of dead-end detectives and fateful love that give your heart a soft punch.
    Nina Corcoran, Pitchfork, 17 Nov. 2023
  • If this weren’t sad enough, the clanging piano chords—loping around in circular motion—taunt her dead-end state.
    Joshua Minsoo Kim, Rolling Stone, 28 Feb. 2024
  • The rest just dead-end in mid-air, with treacherous drop-offs that could cause serious injury — or worse — should anyone fall from them.
    By wayne Parry, Quartz, 18 Mar. 2024
  • Feeling trapped in her dead-end existence, Hazel longs for wider horizons, different people and places — in short, a change.
    Don Aucoin, BostonGlobe.com, 5 June 2023
  • But the well-versed knew about the 3051 Rosslyn St. showroom, hidden off a dead-end street across from a cemetery, open Fridays and periodic weekends.
    Ariel Smith, Los Angeles Times, 23 Aug. 2023
  • Hannah is a 30-something single woman who's feeling adrift and bitter in both her personal life and in her dead-end job.
    Stephanie McNeal, Glamour, 26 Apr. 2024
  • Newbern’s residents live mostly in single-story homes on dead-end streets off State Route 61.
    Meridith Edwards, CNN, 6 Aug. 2023
  • In the new show, Fionna lives with her cat, Cake, working dead-end jobs in a world without magic until the pair is flung through the multiverse, pursued by a powerful foe.
    Olivia McCormack, Washington Post, 9 Sep. 2023
  • The Wisconsin Maritime Museum in Manitowoc was a name thrown around as a possible contender, but that was a dead-end, too.
    Journal Sentinel, 29 Mar. 2023
  • In an interview with Soap Opera Digest, Howarth explained his exit, noting that his contract was up and the character had reached a creative dead-end.
    EW.com, 20 Nov. 2023
  • Instead of a fresh start, lawmakers return next week to their stale, dead-end arguments and legislative gridlock.
    Shelby Grad, Los Angeles Times, 5 Jan. 2024
  • Secluded atop a high knoll on a dead-end street in the Studio City hills, the very private home is additionally cloaked from public view behind high gates, towering walls and overgrown hedges.
    James McClain, Robb Report, 25 Jan. 2024
  • In 2016, investment bank and wealth manager Stifel purchased Eaton, and his new employer dispatched the youngster on what appeared a dead-end assignment.
    Shawn Tully, Fortune, 7 July 2023
  • Cincinnati’s King Records is a place where rock history, civil rights history and Cincinnati history intersect at the corner of a dead-end street just north of Downtown.
    The Enquirer, 25 Feb. 2024
  • Though there’s no proof that this actually happened, the isolated, dead-end road definitely makes an eerie setting.
    Elizabeth Rhodes, Travel + Leisure, 17 Aug. 2023
  • In a dead-end section of the mine illuminated only by the cold flicker of a fizzing neon sign, old man Berdo (Levan Berikashvili) ekes out a meager existence, muttering to the ghost of his son who died ten years prior in a mine collapse.
    Jessica Kiang, Variety, 8 July 2023
  • That’s in part because, for generations, many Egyptians discouraged their children from pursuing work as chefs, viewing kitchen jobs as a step toward a dead-end career.
    Siobhán O'Grady, Washington Post, 27 June 2023
  • Each dead-end eruption of violence has put paid to the notion of a military solution; reconciliation is the only path forward.
    Ziad Asali, The Atlantic, 17 Apr. 2024
  • His days consist of nude swims in his pool, dead-end flirtations with a local club owner (Louise Bourgoin), spats with his disapproving housekeeper (Clotilde Mollet) and halfhearted attempts to quit smoking.
    Lili Loofbourow, Washington Post, 22 Jan. 2024
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dead-end

2 of 3 verb
  • On a chilly night near downtown Los Angeles, a car maneuvers down a dark dead-end street.
    Greg Braxtonsenior Writer, Los Angeles Times, 22 Feb. 2023
  • In the face of this dire situation, battery swapping is a distraction and dead-end that the planet can’t afford.
    IEEE Spectrum, 13 May 2021
  • On the brink of turning 40, he was faced with a midlife crisis brought on by a dead-end sales job, a failing relationship, and an unsuccessful stint as a hip-hop artist.
    Samantha Lande, Men's Health, 3 Mar. 2023
  • The conventional wisdom at the time was that DNR secretary was a dead-end for a politician who harbored hopes of higher office.
    Bill Glauber, Journal Sentinel, 23 Feb. 2023
  • The residential neighbors of bars and restaurants whose streets are jammed with spillover parking or families whose walks dead-end into cars spilling from too-small lots into the curb cuts in sidewalks.
    Dallas News, 21 Feb. 2023
  • On a chilly night near downtown Los Angeles, a car maneuvers down a dark dead-end street.
    Greg Braxtonsenior Writer, Los Angeles Times, 22 Feb. 2023
  • In the face of this dire situation, battery swapping is a distraction and dead-end that the planet can’t afford.
    IEEE Spectrum, 13 May 2021
  • On the brink of turning 40, he was faced with a midlife crisis brought on by a dead-end sales job, a failing relationship, and an unsuccessful stint as a hip-hop artist.
    Samantha Lande, Men's Health, 3 Mar. 2023
  • The conventional wisdom at the time was that DNR secretary was a dead-end for a politician who harbored hopes of higher office.
    Bill Glauber, Journal Sentinel, 23 Feb. 2023
  • The residential neighbors of bars and restaurants whose streets are jammed with spillover parking or families whose walks dead-end into cars spilling from too-small lots into the curb cuts in sidewalks.
    Dallas News, 21 Feb. 2023
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dead end

3 of 3 noun
  • We came to a dead end and had to turn around.
  • My career has hit a dead end.
  • The scene with the wife is a dead end for him, just an item to check off the list.
    Bilge Ebiri, Vulture, 7 May 2021
  • The first stop on the road back to the Final Four looked like a dead end.
    Ben Bolch, Los Angeles Times, 17 Mar. 2022
  • And if taking that left fork in the road is a dead end?
    oregonlive, 11 Nov. 2022
  • When the couple pulled up to their house, at the dead end of the street, no one was around.
    Jon Lee Anderson, The New Yorker, 7 June 2021
  • Each time someone has tried to crack the code, it's led to a dead end.
    Naledi Ushe, USA TODAY, 21 July 2022
  • Drill rap is a dead end that artists no longer need to go down.
    Andre Gee, Rolling Stone, 26 Oct. 2024
  • What makes sense for one might be a dead end for the other.
    IEEE Spectrum, 24 May 2023
  • Though, just days ago, Putin said talks were at a dead end.
    Taylor Wilson, USA TODAY, 21 Apr. 2022
  • Both thought the Arab-Israeli peace process was at a dead end.
    Steven Simon, The New York Review of Books, 16 Jan. 2020
  • There were about two dozen of us who had landed in the same dead end.
    Ann Killion, San Francisco Chronicle, 24 July 2021
  • The calls were dead ends, and Josiah came to loathe making them.
    Andy Greenberg, WIRED, 14 Nov. 2023
  • Projects like these are a rabbit hole as well as a dead end.
    Brian T. Allen, National Review, 10 Feb. 2024
  • Now, many of his big plans are headed for a dead end in the Senate.
    NBC News, 3 Mar. 2021
  • Her brother hit a dead end street, bailed from the car and started to run.
    Suzette Hackney, USA TODAY, 8 Oct. 2024
  • The driver told the victim to pull his car to the dead end of Salina Avenue.
    Carol Robinson, AL.com, 23 Apr. 2018
  • This portion of what is now the Crosstown Trail used to dead end within Glen Park.
    Nellie Bowles, New York Times, 18 Nov. 2019
  • The victim drove first north on Canal Drive, only to find a dead end and then turned around.
    Angie Dimichele, sun-sentinel.com, 16 Nov. 2021
  • The boardwalk extends for a few hundred yards to a dead end.
    Taylor Piephoff, Charlotte Observer, 31 Jan. 2024
  • Phone numbers have led to dead ends due to a lack of personnel at the IRS.
    Raphael Romero Ruiz, The Arizona Republic, 18 Feb. 2024
  • The 'tomb of the angel' search for a teen missing since 1983 hit a dead end at the Vatican.
    Petra Cahill, NBC News, 11 July 2019
  • But the researchers behind the recent work don’t see TDA as a dead end.
    Quanta Magazine, 7 Dec. 2022
  • At the dead end for cars, the unpaved Pipeline Trail begins.
    Brian Coyne, San Francisco Chronicle, 16 May 2018
  • And Memo and his team kept running into dead ends for days.
    National Geographic, 5 Nov. 2019
  • Bryan Moore: All attempts to locate them were — were a dead end.
    CBS News, 10 Aug. 2019
  • Your hair won't be weighed down by dead ends and the results will leave you with flowing locks.
    Jillian Ruffo, Seventeen, 28 Nov. 2018
  • The fourth, tucked away in a dusty dead end, is only as big as four ping-pong tables.
    Wired, 29 July 2022
  • This all might seem to make exploring Venus a dead end.
    Chris Wright, Wired, 4 Aug. 2021
  • At a seemingly dead end, Roger sold the land to Bishop.
    Katherine McLaughlin, Architectural Digest, 17 Oct. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'dead-end.' 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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