See do by halves in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
Download JSON data for do by halves meaning in English (3.3kB)
{
"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 entries with language name categories using raw markup",
"parents": [
"Entries with language name categories using raw markup",
"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": "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
"parents": [
"Terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"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": "quotation"
},
{
"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": "quotation"
},
{
"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": "quotation"
}
],
"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",
"tags": [
"Australia"
],
"text": "Audio (AU)"
}
],
"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 entries with language name categories using raw markup",
"English idioms",
"English lemmas",
"English light verb constructions",
"English multiword terms",
"English negative polarity items",
"English terms with audio links",
"English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
"English terms with quotations",
"English transitive verbs",
"English verbs",
"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": "quotation"
},
{
"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": "quotation"
},
{
"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": "quotation"
}
],
"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",
"tags": [
"Australia"
],
"text": "Audio (AU)"
}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "do by half-measures"
}
],
"word": "do by halves"
}
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-06 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). 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.