dead time

American  

noun

1. downtime.

2. Electronics. an interval during which an actuating signal produces no response.

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dead time British  

noun

1. electronics the interval of time immediately following a stimulus, during which an electrical device, component, etc, is insensitive to a further stimulus

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Etymology

Origin of dead time

First recorded in 1905–10

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

dead time

The dog days of summer are also a historically dead time in Hollywood, when power brokers take lengthy vacations and the pace of deal-making stalls.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 28, 2023

The changes had long been pushed by baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred in an effort to combat the increase in dead time over four decades and suffocation of offense in the age of analytics.

From Seattle Times ● Sep. 9, 2022

The clock would address baseball’s most infuriating dead time — hitters wandering away from home plate during an at-bat, as though puzzling about Fermat’s Last Theorem.

From Washington Post ● Mar. 16, 2022

Mr Gidney, principal dentist at a practice in Monmouthshire which has 7,000 patients, said the "dead time" was limiting how many non-urgent patients they could see and creating a "bottleneck" in the system.

From BBC ● Aug. 28, 2021

In the summer it was the tiempo muerto, the dead time, and the campesinos barely escaped starvation.

From "Dreaming in Cuban" by Cristina García