Word.ws English Dictionary

doing by halves

doing by halves is the present participle and gerund 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 doing by halves

What is doing by halves the present participle and gerund of?
Doing by halves is the present participle and gerund of do by halves.

Words near doing by halves in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: doing 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: “doing by halves.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/doing_by_halves. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.