dead of

Idioms and Phrases

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.