"by half" meaning in English

See by half in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Prepositional phrase

Head templates: {{head|en|prepositional phrase|head=}} by half, {{en-PP}} by half
  1. (colloquial) By far; by a long chalk; to an excessive extent or degree, especially to the extent that it is negative, gets in the way, etc. Tags: colloquial Related terms: by halves, for one's own good
    Sense id: en-by_half-en-prep_phrase-3ryje1N9

Download JSON data for by half meaning in English (1.2kB)

{
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "prepositional phrase",
        "head": ""
      },
      "expansion": "by half",
      "name": "head"
    },
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "by half",
      "name": "en-PP"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "prep_phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "Little Miss Smartyboots is too clever by half.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2012-11-09, Decca Aitkenhead, “Robbie Coltrane: ‘I take no nonsense’”, in The Guardian",
          "text": "He and two friends were known as “the three pseuds” among the rest of the boys, who thought them too clever by half.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "By far; by a long chalk; to an excessive extent or degree, especially to the extent that it is negative, gets in the way, etc."
      ],
      "id": "en-by_half-en-prep_phrase-3ryje1N9",
      "links": [
        [
          "By far",
          "by far"
        ],
        [
          "by a long chalk",
          "by a long chalk"
        ],
        [
          "excessive",
          "excessive"
        ],
        [
          "gets in the way",
          "get in the way"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(colloquial) By far; by a long chalk; to an excessive extent or degree, especially to the extent that it is negative, gets in the way, etc."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "by halves"
        },
        {
          "word": "for one's own good"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "colloquial"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "by half"
}
{
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "prepositional phrase",
        "head": ""
      },
      "expansion": "by half",
      "name": "head"
    },
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "by half",
      "name": "en-PP"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "prep_phrase",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "by halves"
    },
    {
      "word": "for one's own good"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English colloquialisms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English prepositional phrases",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English terms with usage examples"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "Little Miss Smartyboots is too clever by half.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2012-11-09, Decca Aitkenhead, “Robbie Coltrane: ‘I take no nonsense’”, in The Guardian",
          "text": "He and two friends were known as “the three pseuds” among the rest of the boys, who thought them too clever by half.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "By far; by a long chalk; to an excessive extent or degree, especially to the extent that it is negative, gets in the way, etc."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "By far",
          "by far"
        ],
        [
          "by a long chalk",
          "by a long chalk"
        ],
        [
          "excessive",
          "excessive"
        ],
        [
          "gets in the way",
          "get in the way"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(colloquial) By far; by a long chalk; to an excessive extent or degree, especially to the extent that it is negative, gets in the way, etc."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "colloquial"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "by half"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-03-12 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-03-01 using wiktextract (68773ab and 5f6ddbb). 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.