This paper focuses on a problem of adaptive control for a class of nonlinear strict-feedback systems with a fuzzy dead zone and immeasurable states. By using the adaptive backstepping technique, an adaptive fuzzy output-feedback controller is constructed. The proposed control method requires only one adaptive law for an nth-order system. Compared with the conventional deterministic dead-zone models in previous articles, the main advantage of this paper is that the proposed dead-zonemodel is uncertain and fuzzy. By defuzzifying for fuzzy dead zone Λ(u) and employing an integrated design, an integrated fuzzy controller is constructed. It is proved that, even though the dead-zone input Λ (u) is fuzzy, the integrated fuzzy controller can make the closedloop system semiglobally uniformly ultimately bounded and the tracking error converge to a small neighborhood of the origin. Finally, simulation results are provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach. © 2014 IEEE.