Definition of "dead end" []

• An end of a passage, such as a street or pipe, that affords no exit. (noun)
• A point beyond which no movement or progress can be made; an impasse. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "But a less well-trained Master Corporal Harry Benson, faced three minutes later with the same diversion, managed to get off course and end up at a dead end with six Ml 13s behind him, they having followed him, sheep-like, without bothering to check the route on their own maps."
• "Twenty feet below the nest cavity we stop, having come to a dead end with our nub-and-ledge clambering."
• "Rachel had hoped to have a conclusive answer for William Pickering by the time they landed, but her thought experiments had run into a dead end with the chondrules."