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Reader question: Please explain “dead man walking”, as in this sentence: Despite reports suggesting that the Sony Walkman brand was a dead man walking, the brand continues to crop up - most recently in the electronics giant’s homeland of Japan... My comments: To say Sony’s Walkman is a “dead man walking” is to suggest that it is doomed. Which turns out not to be the case (for now at least, if I read it correctly), but that doesn’t matter to us, does it? I mean, let Sony worry about that. We’d all be happy, I’m sure, to deal with the phrase alone. Can you visualize a dead man walking? A terrible sight you see, to be sure, but fortunately that’s just an imagination. Dead men won’t walk, which is why an idiom is not to be read literally, but expressively. In other words, it’s just an expression. The idea is, even though the man is seen walking, he’s really no different than dead. In American prisons, wardens used to call a prisoners with a death sentence “dead man”, meaning his days are numbered as he is about to be executed soon. Indeed, as these men are led out of their prison cells, wardens call out loud: “Dead man walking here!” Just a reminder to everybody around that another condemned man is on his way to the death bed. There’s a book, as well as a movie, of the same title. Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) wrote a poem with this very title, in which he addresses himself as The Dead Man Walking, saying, in part: | 
