dead-and-alive vs deathly

dead-and-alive

adj

  • Synonym of dead-alive 

deathly

adj

  • Appearing as though dead, or on the verge of death. 

  • Deadly, fatal, causing death. 

  • Extreme. 

adv

  • In a way that resembles death. 

  • Extremely, dreadfully. 

How often have the words dead-and-alive and deathly occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )