"take one's half out of the middle" meaning in English

See take one's half out of the middle in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Forms: takes one's half out of the middle [present, singular, third-person], taking one's half out of the middle [participle, present], took one's half out of the middle [past], taken one's half out of the middle [participle, past]
Etymology: From the practice of driving too close to the center of a two-way road, so that the remaining half of the road is split on both sides of you, leaving vehicles that are going the other way with no usable space on which to drive. Head templates: {{en-verb|take<,,took,taken> one's half out of the middle}} take one's half out of the middle (third-person singular simple present takes one's half out of the middle, present participle taking one's half out of the middle, simple past took one's half out of the middle, past participle taken one's half out of the middle)
  1. To take the portion of something to which one is entitled, but in such a way that it shortchanges others.
    Sense id: en-take_one's_half_out_of_the_middle-en-verb-EeXj-iVv Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for take one's half out of the middle meaning in English (2.5kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "From the practice of driving too close to the center of a two-way road, so that the remaining half of the road is split on both sides of you, leaving vehicles that are going the other way with no usable space on which to drive.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "takes one's half out of the middle",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "taking one's half out of the middle",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "took one's half out of the middle",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "taken one's half out of the middle",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "take<,,took,taken> one's half out of the middle"
      },
      "expansion": "take one's half out of the middle (third-person singular simple present takes one's half out of the middle, present participle taking one's half out of the middle, simple past took one's half out of the middle, past participle taken one's half out of the middle)",
      "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"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2008 October 14, thea, “Polytheism -> Monotheism -> Atheism”, in Atheism vs Christianity (Usenet)",
          "text": "In fact, I have heard people say they didn't believe what some pastor said, because they did not live their three score and ten years. So your 66.2 is a bit shy. Satan is still taking his half out of the middle.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2015 September 23, “We Saw You Have Sex on the Beach, Text About Drugs, and Eat Pizza While Cycling”, in The Stranger",
          "text": "Technically speaking, we all own the sidewalk. But last week, you were taking your half out of the middle, slowly lurching through the Belltown/South Lake Union border zone and staring into your phone.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2016 September 14, Samantha Craggs, “Where should Hamilton's LRT stops be located? Did Metrolinx get it right?”, in CBC News",
          "text": "The current plan \"takes up its half out of the middle and you can have what's left over.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To take the portion of something to which one is entitled, but in such a way that it shortchanges others."
      ],
      "id": "en-take_one's_half_out_of_the_middle-en-verb-EeXj-iVv",
      "links": [
        [
          "portion",
          "portion"
        ],
        [
          "entitled",
          "entitled"
        ],
        [
          "shortchange",
          "shortchange"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "take one's half out of the middle"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "From the practice of driving too close to the center of a two-way road, so that the remaining half of the road is split on both sides of you, leaving vehicles that are going the other way with no usable space on which to drive.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "takes one's half out of the middle",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "taking one's half out of the middle",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "took one's half out of the middle",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "taken one's half out of the middle",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "take<,,took,taken> one's half out of the middle"
      },
      "expansion": "take one's half out of the middle (third-person singular simple present takes one's half out of the middle, present participle taking one's half out of the middle, simple past took one's half out of the middle, past participle taken one's half out of the middle)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English verbs"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2008 October 14, thea, “Polytheism -> Monotheism -> Atheism”, in Atheism vs Christianity (Usenet)",
          "text": "In fact, I have heard people say they didn't believe what some pastor said, because they did not live their three score and ten years. So your 66.2 is a bit shy. Satan is still taking his half out of the middle.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2015 September 23, “We Saw You Have Sex on the Beach, Text About Drugs, and Eat Pizza While Cycling”, in The Stranger",
          "text": "Technically speaking, we all own the sidewalk. But last week, you were taking your half out of the middle, slowly lurching through the Belltown/South Lake Union border zone and staring into your phone.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2016 September 14, Samantha Craggs, “Where should Hamilton's LRT stops be located? Did Metrolinx get it right?”, in CBC News",
          "text": "The current plan \"takes up its half out of the middle and you can have what's left over.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To take the portion of something to which one is entitled, but in such a way that it shortchanges others."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "portion",
          "portion"
        ],
        [
          "entitled",
          "entitled"
        ],
        [
          "shortchange",
          "shortchange"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "take one's half out of the middle"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 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.