Word.ws English Dictionary

do by halves

do by halves verb: to perform (a task, etc) partially or incompletely; to do (something) inadequately, halfheartedly, or shoddily.

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
    • Rin-Tin-Tin does nothing by halves, for he tracks the murderer himself and kills him.1925 Sept. 21, Mordaunt Hall, "The Screen" (film review of The Freshman), New York Times (retrieved 5 March 2014)

do by halves meaning in Bengali

do by halves in Bengali

কোনো কাজ অসম্পূর্ণভাবে, অংশত করা, কোনো কিছু অযত্নে, অযথাযথভাবে, অনিচ্ছাসত্ত্বেও করা

Forms of do by halves

third-person singular presentdoes by halves
present participledoing by halves
pastdid by halves
past participledone by halves
alternative formdo by half-measures

Questions about do by halves

What does do by halves mean?
Do by halves means to perform (a task, etc) partially or incompletely; to do (something) inadequately, halfheartedly, or shoddily.
What is do by halves in Bengali?
Do by halves in Bengali is কোনো কাজ অসম্পূর্ণভাবে, অংশত করা, কোনো কিছু অযত্নে. See Do by halves meaning in Bengali.
What part of speech is do by halves?
Do by halves is a verb.
What is the past tense of do by halves?
The past tense of do by halves is did by halves.

Words near do by halves in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: do by halves (page history and authors); do 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.

Last updated:

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

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