deadfall

English

WOTD – 29 July 2018

Deadfall (sense 1) in a forest

A small deadfall (sense 2) in the style of the Paiute people of North America

dead +‎ fall.

deadfall (countable and uncountable, plural deadfalls)

(uncountable, Canada, US) Coarse woody debris; deadwood.
1. (countable, specifically) A fallen tree.
(countable, Canada, US, hunting) A kind of trap for large animals, consisting of a heavy board or log that falls on to the prey.
- 1922 November 25, A[rthur] M[urray] Chisholm, “A Thousand a Plate”, in Western Story Magazine, volume XXX, number 4, New York, N.Y.: Street & Smith Corporation, OCLC 11910542, chapter II, page 90, column 2:
  It was a week after the taking of the black fox that Skookum Bill, on a short exploring trip a few miles west of their cabin, came across a deadfall which held a dead marten. He took the marten, and, when he returned, said to Dobbs: "I didn't know you'd built any deadfalls in the timber past the big draw?"
(countable, US, slang) A cheap, rough bar or saloon.
- 2006, Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day, New York, N.Y.: The Penguin Press, →ISBN, page 406; republished London: Vintage Books, 2007, →ISBN:
  They had lived down in horse barns, army “A” tents with the old blood-stains onto them, city hotels with canopy beds, woke up in back rooms of deadfalls where the bars had toothmarks end to end.