Where does halfdead come from?

It is traced to Middle English.

halfdead

Word Rarity Very rare

Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English

Scrabble Score

Letters

Syllables

Unique Chars

adj

"But even after he was beyond the danger zone, he still felt halfdead."
"Until the day King Nax had seized him and shattered his legs—not broken them, but shattered them, eight men taking turns with a mallet—and then sent him home, halfdead, to his wife, Aliss, in the northern Dells."
"Some may be halfdead physically; they need people to visit them in the hospital or in their homes. But there are many more who are halfdead in other ways."
"[...] from a vantage point of security, the lawyer is taught to ask the question from the vantage point of one lying halfdead by the side of the road."

From Middle English halfdede, from Old English healfdēad (“half-dead”), from Proto-Germanic *halbadaudaz (“halfdead”), equivalent to half- + dead. Cognate with West Frisian healdea (“halfdead”), Dutch halfdood (“halfdead”), German Low German halvdood (“halfdead”), German halbtot (“halfdead”), Swedish halvdöd (“halfdead”).

half dead (alternative) half-dead (alternative)