DEAD AIR • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Dead air

... against its boulders. The cry of shepherds through the fog suggests the loneliness and danger of the hills. The bleating of penned sheep or goats, and the tinkling of the cowbells, are mysteriously distant and yet distinct in the dull dead air. Then, again, how immeasurably high above our heads appear the domes and peaks of snow revealed through chasms in the drifting cloud; how desolate the glaciers and the avalanches in gleams of light that struggle through the mist! There is a leaden glare peculiar to clouds, ...

— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... seen mirages before—mirages that, like a faulty glass, distorted shapes and outlines, and mirages that brought real and recognizable places into view like the one they were staring at in spell-bound fascination. So perfect in detail, and so close it hung in the heavy, dead air that it seemed as though they could reach out and touch it—a perfect inverted picture of what appeared to be a two or three mile sweep of valley, one side sparsely wooded, and the other sloping gently upward into the same low-rolling ridge that formed their own northern horizon. ...

— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx