Dead-ender

[Dave Wilton]

I heard the term "dead-ender" for the first time today in Gen. Tommy Franks
press briefing. He used the term, which he credited to Rumsfeld, to mean
loyalist who will fight to the end. It is disparaging, connoting that the
person has no choice, if he doesn't fight to the end the people will have
him killed because of past atrocities.

I found the following Rumsfeld quote from a 26 Nov 2001 press conference:

"Nor can I imagine that [Mullah Mohammed Omar will] end up being captured.
>From everything I've read about him, he's a rather determined, dead-ender
type and to coin a phrase. And I just, you know, it could happen, he could
be captured. Everyone has an opportunity to surrender. Nobody wants to kill
somebody who's surrendering. But he just doesn't feel to me like the
surrendering type." From
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Nov2001/t11262001_t1126sd.html

There's a 1993 use to mean a person whose life is going nowhere: "The hero
of the novel is Rick Jeffers, Craven's personification of nineties hip: a
foul-mouthed, controlled substance-consuming, dead-ender who lives to spin
his wheels and chase porn star Ginger Quail, to the chagrin of his
girlfriend Tamara." Steve Brock (sbrock at teal.csn.org), Subject: Fast Sofa by
Bruce Craven (Fiction), alt.books.reviews, rec.arts.books, 1993-03-08
09:52:30 PST

There's also a recent sports use, meaning a team that has no hope of the
championship: "Ask him what the most important game of the season is and
he'll likely tell you it's the next one his team's playing, whether the foe
is a BL contender or a dead- ender." Rick Bailey, "One Step Away,"
www.registercitizen.com, 16 March 2003

I've seen other uses to mean roads or railroads that go nowhere. The web
also has hits of uses to mean a job that goes nowhere or to mean failed
arguments.