Word.ws English Dictionary

by halves

by halves prepositional phrase: partially, incompletely; inadequately, halfheartedly, shoddily.

Prepositional phrase

  1. (idiomatic) Partially, incompletely; inadequately, halfheartedly, shoddily.
    • Thou fool, I ne'er do things by halves,
      Farthings are made for Irish slaves;
      No brass for me, it must be gold,
      Or fifty pounds in silver told.c. 1724, Punch's Petition to the Ladies, Jonathan Swift
    • I have no notion of loving people by halves; it is not my nature. My attachments are always excessively strong.1817, Jane Austen, chapter 6, in Northanger Abbey

by halves meaning in Bengali

by halves in Bengali

আংশিকভাবে, অসম্পূর্ণভাবে, অপ্রতুলভাবে, অনাগ্রহের সাথে, নিম্নমানেরভাবে

Examples of by halves in a sentence

  • Johnson, who, as we have before remarked, rarely praised or dispraised things by halves, broke forth in a warm eulogy.1849, Washington Irving, chapter 26, in Oliver Goldsmith: A Biography:
  • She was too thoroughgoing to do things by halves.1901, Ralph Connor, chapter 6, in The Man From Glengarry:
  • "When things happen to us in Latin America, it is never by halves.1989 July 30, Larry Rohter, “Theater: In Latin America, Headlines Inspire The Drama”, in New York Times, retrieved 05 Mar 2014:
  • They don't do things by halves in the States.2006 Sept. 24, Gareth Chadwick, "Far-flung business: Making all the right moves, The Independent (UK) (retrieved 5 March 2014)

Words formed from by halves

Questions about by halves

What does by halves mean?
By halves means partially, incompletely; inadequately, halfheartedly, shoddily.
What is by halves in Bengali?
By halves in Bengali is আংশিকভাবে, অসম্পূর্ণভাবে, অপ্রতুলভাবে. See By halves meaning in Bengali.
How do you use by halves in a sentence?
Johnson, who, as we have before remarked, rarely praised or dispraised things by halves, broke forth in a warm eulogy.
What part of speech is by halves?
By halves is a prepositional phrase.

Words near by halves in the dictionary

  1. by guess or by golly
  2. by guess or by gosh
  3. by gum
  4. by gummy
  5. by half
  6. by halves
  7. by hand
  8. by heart
  9. by heavens
  10. by hell
  11. by hook and by crook

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: by halves (page history and authors); by halves (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-by halves.ogg.

Cite this entry: “by halves.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/by_halves. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.