Word.ws English Dictionary

did by halves

did by halves is the simple past of do by halves.

Meaning of do by halves

Verb

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)

  1. (idiomatic, transitive) To perform (a task, etc) partially or incompletely; to do (something) inadequately, halfheartedly, or shoddily.
    • [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.1880, Mark Twain, chapter 30, in A Tramp Abroad

Questions about did by halves

What is did by halves the simple past of?
Did by halves is the simple past of do by halves.

Words near did by halves in the dictionary

  1. did bird
  2. did bits
  3. did business
  4. did by
  5. did by half-measures
  6. did by halves
  7. did cartwheels
  8. did cheetah flips
  9. did credit
  10. did down
  11. did drugs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: did by halves (page history and authors); do by halves (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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Cite this entry: “did by halves.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/did_by_halves. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.