deadfall

Noun

1. Coarse woody debris; deadwood.
   • Heaver forest growth on the north-facing slopes, together with considerable deadfall and soil cover, makes geologic interpretation there difficult. - 1967, Calvin S. Bromfield, “Introduction”, in Geology of the Mount...

   1. (countable, specifically) A fallen tree.

      • A fifth negative test pit was excavated near the largest creek at Middle Point. As well, the roots of all deadfalls within the corridor were examined for the presence of cultural material. Deadfalls were more common in...
      • We should go up to the forest and see if we can find more dry deadfalls. That green wood you were trying to burn last night was all smoke and no heat. - 2012, Robin Hobb [pseudonym; Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden], City...
2. A kind of trap for animals, consisting of a heavy board or log that falls on to the prey.
   • It [the wolverine] is so cunning as rarely to enter a deadfall itself, but will carefully pull it to pieces and then eat the bait in safety. I was informed by hunters at Selkirk Settlement that they sometimes lost the...
   • The beaver trap is a deadfall of considerable weight, nicely adjusted over the animal's road or track, frequently on a dam. […] The animal passing under the deadfall has to step on a little stick raised an inch or two...
   • 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,...
3. A cheap, rough bar or saloon.
   • Dens of the description of the "Tapis Franc," and the "deadfalls" of San Francisco and Sacramento, are now matters of history only, and it seems beyond the bounds of probability that similar haunts of vice, and the...
   • […] I was an occasional dram-drinker at their saloon. I was never imposed upon by them with bad liquor, nor in any manner cheated there. I did not learn they kept loaded dice, marked cards, or any back-room...
   • 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. - 2006, Thomas Pynchon,...