Word.ws English Dictionary

going off half-cocked

going off half-cocked is the present participle and gerund of go off half-cocked.

Meaning of go off half-cocked

Verb

go off half-cocked (third-person singular simple present goes off half-cocked, present participle going off half-cocked, simple past went off half-cocked, past participle gone off half-cocked)

  1. (colloquial, idiomatic) To take a premature or ill-considered action.
    • Make sure none of your men go off half-cocked and ruin this operation.

Questions about going off half-cocked

What is going off half-cocked the present participle and gerund of?
Going off half-cocked is the present participle and gerund of go off half-cocked.

Words near going off half-cocked in the dictionary

  1. going off
  2. going off at a tangent
  3. going off at half cock
  4. going off at halfcock
  5. going off at score
  6. going off half-cocked
  7. going off into the weeds
  8. going off on a tangent
  9. going off on one
  10. going off the boil
  11. going off the handle

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: going off half-cocked (page history and authors); go off half-cocked (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: “going off half-cocked.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/going_off_half-cocked. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.