by halves
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.47 in modern English
19
Scrabble Score
8
Letters
1
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
prep_phrase
Partially, incompletely; inadequately, halfheartedly, shoddily.
Example Sentences
- "Thou fool, I ne'er do things by halves, Farthings are made for Irish slaves; No brass for me, it must be gold, Or fifty pounds in silver told."
- "I have no notion of loving people by halves; it is not my nature. My attachments are always excessively strong."
- "Johnson, who, as we have before remarked, rarely praised or dispraised things by halves, broke forth in a warm eulogy."
- "She was too thoroughgoing to do things by halves."
- ""When things happen to us in Latin America, it is never by halves. There is no equilibrium, so when it rains, towns get inundated and disappear, and when we have a revolution, half the population dies.""
- "They don't do things by halves in the States. Whether it is cars, burgers or waistlines, Americans like to think bigger."