dead center

American  

[ded sen-ter] / ˈdɛd ˈsɛn tər /

adverb

1. in or at the exact midpoint.

   The town is located dead center between Dallas and Houston.

   She took a single shot and hit the cardboard figure dead center.

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noun

1. the exact center or midpoint.

   I live in the dead center of the capitol, and parking is a nightmare.

   I hate when people leave their shopping cart in the dead center of the aisle.

2. Machinery.

   1. Also called dead point.  (in a reciprocating engine) either of two positions at which the crank cannot be turned by the connecting rod, occurring at each end of a stroke when the crank and connecting rod are in the same line.

   2. a tapered rod, mounted in the tailstock spindle of a lathe, upon which the work to be turned is placed.

Other Word Forms

• dead-center adjective

Etymology

Origin of dead center

First recorded in 1870–75

Example Sentences

The piston faces have small, crescent-shaped reliefs into which the valves extend near the top dead center.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jan. 23, 2026

In the bottom of the sixth, Seattle center fielder Julio Rodríguez robbed Taylor of a two-run home run to dead center field.

From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 7, 2025

So, imagine me standing on top of a soapbox, dead center in the middle of a crowd of about 1,000 people, yelling at the top of my lungs, "All books are not created equal!"

From Salon • Apr. 5, 2024

Planted dead center on the stage in “This House Is Not a Home,” a slippery, ever-shifting work by Nile Harris, is a house — a bounce house.

From New York Times • Jan. 5, 2024

In diameter it was perhaps one hundred feet, and, suspended in its dead center was a smaller sphere of perhaps twenty feet diameter.

From "Strange the Dreamer" by Laini Taylor

Related Words

• center
• omphalos