One must stand up in the singleness of his ignorance to understand all the mysterious feelings connected with a dead.—Harv. Reg., p. 378.
And fearful of the morrow's screw or dead,
Takes book and candle underneath his bed.
Class Poem, by B.D. Winslow, at Harv. Coll., 1835, p. 10.
He, unmoved by Freshman's curses,
Loves the deads which Freshmen make.—MS. Poem.
But oh! what aching heads had they!
What deads they perpetrated the succeeding day.—Ibid.
It was formerly customary in many colleges, and is now in a few, to talk about "taking a dead."
I have a most instinctive dread
Of getting up to take a dead,
Unworthy degradation!—Harv. Reg., p. 312.
DEAD-SET. The same as a DEAD, which see.
Now's the day and now's the hour;
See approach Old Sikes's power;
See the front of Logic lower;
Screws, dead-sets, and fines.—Rebelliad, p. 52.
Grose has this word in his Slang Dictionary, and defines it "a concerted scheme to defraud a person by gaming." "This phrase," says Bartlett, in his Dictionary of Americanisms, "seems to be taken from the lifeless attitude of a pointer in marking his game."
"The lifeless attitude" seems to be the only point of resemblance between the above definitions, and the appearance of one who is taking a dead set. The word has of late years been displaced by the more general use of the word dead, with the same meaning.