dead of

Idioms  

1. The period of greatest intensity of something, such as darkness or cold. For example, I love looking at seed catalogs in the dead of winter, when it's below zero outside. The earliest recorded use of dead of night, for “darkest time of night,” was in Edward Hall's Chronicle of 1548: “In the dead of the night ... he broke up his camp and fled.” Dead of winter, for the coldest part of winter, dates from the early 1600s.

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Example Sentences

“It meant that we came to set with a dynamic in place. We really needed that because we were shooting in the dead of summer in a boiling hot studio and some of those days were particularly long. We were able to be there for each other and be each other’s morale and that extended into the scenes as well.”

From Los Angeles Times

“Not long after that day, Jemma and her family left. They fled Chemung County in the dead of night. My brothers said they had to go find freedom somewhere else.”

From Literature

And who was going to willingly drive all the way out to a cemetery in the dead of night to pick up a boy caked in dirt and not ask questions?

From Literature

"Reliable intelligence indicates that Aidaros Alzubidi and others have escaped in the dead of night," a statement from the coalition said, detailing a boat-and-plane journey from Aden to Abu Dhabi via Somaliland and Somalia.

From Barron's

Ten months after the most mind-boggling trade in basketball history went down in the dead of night, only one thing is unsurprising.

From The Wall Street Journal