dead wood

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dead wood (uncountable)

1. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see dead,‎ wood.
2. (figuratively) Matters or things that have become unnecessary or otherwise useless; bloat, dead weight.
   • 2001, Michael B. Arthur, Denise M. Rousseau, The Boundaryless Career: A New Employment Principle for a New Organizational Era‎, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 140:

     Everybody knows that when you have a layoff, you use it as chance to get rid of the people you wanted to get rid of anyway, but couldn't document or hadn't bothered documenting as bad employees […] . If you don't have much dead wood, you hope they make you use a senioentrity list, because then you can say it's out of your control.

• Common in management jargon, where it often refers to excess personnel that is no longer (perceived to be) productive.
• Often paired with the verb cut out: I spent some time cutting out dead wood from my thesis and now the text reads much more coherently.

• put the dead wood on

• clean house
• deadwood
• Deadwood