See do by halves on Wiktionary
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "does by halves",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "doing by halves",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "did by halves",
"tags": [
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "done by halves",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "do<does,,did,done> by halves"
},
"expansion": "do by halves (third-person singular simple present does by halves, present participle doing by halves, simple past did by halves, past participle done by halves)",
"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
"Entries with incorrect language header",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English light verb constructions",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English negative polarity items",
"parents": [
"Negative polarity items",
"Terms by semantic function"
],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with 1 entry",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with entries",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1880, Mark Twain, chapter 30, in A Tramp Abroad:",
"text": "[A] pedestrian tour of Europe could not be complete without them. Of course that decided me at once to see them, for I never allow myself to do things by halves, or in a slurring, slipshod way.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1925 Sept. 21, Mordaunt Hall, \"The Screen\" (film review of The Freshman), New York Times (retrieved 5 March 2014)",
"text": "Rin-Tin-Tin does nothing by halves, for he tracks the murderer himself and kills him."
},
{
"ref": "1988, Roald Dahl, Mathilda:",
"text": "Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog!",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2005 April 8, Claus Moser, “Obituary: Jane Attenborough”, in The Guardian, UK, retrieved 2014-03-05:",
"text": "If there was one word to describe her, it was \"intense\" - so well chosen in her brother Michael's moving eulogy. Nothing, absolutely nothing was done by halves. . . . Her commitment was total.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To perform (a task, etc) partially or incompletely; to do (something) inadequately, halfheartedly, or shoddily."
],
"id": "en-do_by_halves-en-verb-3L9TsjVG",
"links": [
[
"partially",
"partially"
],
[
"incompletely",
"incompletely"
],
[
"inadequately",
"inadequately"
],
[
"halfheartedly",
"halfheartedly"
],
[
"shoddily",
"shoddily"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic, transitive, chiefly in the negative) To perform (a task, etc) partially or incompletely; to do (something) inadequately, halfheartedly, or shoddily."
],
"raw_tags": [
"in the negative"
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "do by half-measures"
}
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic",
"transitive"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "en-au-do by halves.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/3/3a/En-au-do_by_halves.ogg/En-au-do_by_halves.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/En-au-do_by_halves.ogg"
}
],
"word": "do by halves"
}
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "does by halves",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "doing by halves",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "did by halves",
"tags": [
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "done by halves",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "do<does,,did,done> by halves"
},
"expansion": "do by halves (third-person singular simple present does by halves, present participle doing by halves, simple past did by halves, past participle done by halves)",
"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English idioms",
"English lemmas",
"English light verb constructions",
"English multiword terms",
"English negative polarity items",
"English terms with quotations",
"English transitive verbs",
"English verbs",
"Pages with 1 entry",
"Pages with entries",
"Quotation templates to be cleaned"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1880, Mark Twain, chapter 30, in A Tramp Abroad:",
"text": "[A] pedestrian tour of Europe could not be complete without them. Of course that decided me at once to see them, for I never allow myself to do things by halves, or in a slurring, slipshod way.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1925 Sept. 21, Mordaunt Hall, \"The Screen\" (film review of The Freshman), New York Times (retrieved 5 March 2014)",
"text": "Rin-Tin-Tin does nothing by halves, for he tracks the murderer himself and kills him."
},
{
"ref": "1988, Roald Dahl, Mathilda:",
"text": "Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog!",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2005 April 8, Claus Moser, “Obituary: Jane Attenborough”, in The Guardian, UK, retrieved 2014-03-05:",
"text": "If there was one word to describe her, it was \"intense\" - so well chosen in her brother Michael's moving eulogy. Nothing, absolutely nothing was done by halves. . . . Her commitment was total.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To perform (a task, etc) partially or incompletely; to do (something) inadequately, halfheartedly, or shoddily."
],
"links": [
[
"partially",
"partially"
],
[
"incompletely",
"incompletely"
],
[
"inadequately",
"inadequately"
],
[
"halfheartedly",
"halfheartedly"
],
[
"shoddily",
"shoddily"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic, transitive, chiefly in the negative) To perform (a task, etc) partially or incompletely; to do (something) inadequately, halfheartedly, or shoddily."
],
"raw_tags": [
"in the negative"
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic",
"transitive"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "en-au-do by halves.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/3/3a/En-au-do_by_halves.ogg/En-au-do_by_halves.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/En-au-do_by_halves.ogg"
}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "do by half-measures"
}
],
"word": "do by halves"
}
Download raw JSONL data for do by halves meaning in All languages combined (2.8kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-01-31 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-01-20 using wiktextract (bcd5c38 and 9dbd323). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.