An archaic or dialect term for wages or payment that is unclaimed, forfeited, or no longer owed, or for pay given to someone no longer working.
From 'dead' (no longer active, finished) and 'pay' (wages or compensation). This compound term combined 'dead' with 'pay' to describe payment that was effectively finished or inactive, though exact historical origins are obscure.
Terms like 'deadpay' emerge from specific historical labor or military contexts—payroll systems used precise terminology to distinguish between current wages, back pay, and forfeited wages, but most of these terms have disappeared with modern accounting standardization.
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