On some non-English keyboards, a key that is used with another key to create an accented character. A dead key, when pressed, produces no visible character but indicates that the diacritic it represents is to be combined with the character produced by the next letter key pressed.
a key that does not produce a character
a key that generates a character, such as the umlaut (double-dot), that is combined with another character to form a composite character
a key that when you press it nothing happens
an accent key, such as acute, grave, or umlaut, that doesn't produce a character by itself, but when followed by another key, produces an accented character, such as a-acute, e-grave, u-umlaut, n-tilde, and so on
A key that, when pressed, doesn't produce a symbol, but initiates a compose sequence.
a key in a particular keyboard layout that does not generate a character, but rather changes the character generated by a following keystroke. Dead keys are commonly used to enter accented forms of letters in writing systems based on Roman script.
A dead key is a key on a typewriter or a computer keyboard that produces no output when it is pressed, but modifies the output of the next key pressed after it. For example, Option-` + e produces é on the Macintosh.
