Word.ws English Dictionary

done by halves

done by halves is the past participle 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 done by halves

What is done by halves the past participle of?
Done by halves is the past participle of do by halves.

Words near done by halves in the dictionary

  1. done bits
  2. done brown
  3. done business
  4. done by
  5. done by half-measures
  6. done by halves
  7. done cartwheels
  8. done cheetah flips
  9. done credit
  10. done deal
  11. done deals

Source and license

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