Word.ws English Dictionary

half-cock

half-cock adverb: not with full vigour, half-heartedly.

Adverb

half-cock (comparative more half-cock, superlative most half-cock)

  1. (UK) Not with full vigour, half-heartedly.
    • Certain progress, however, has been made, such as using Alan Knottto help England's wicket-keepers, for instance, while other 'specialist' coaches have been employed thanks to the Whittingdale scheme. But, until now, so much of this has been done half-cock.1994, Ian Botham, My Autobiography, page 352
    • If you're going to be a freak, be a complete freak, no point at all in going at it half-cock.1997, Stephen Fry, Moab Is My Washpot

Forms of half-cock

comparativemore half-cock
superlativemost half-cock

Questions about half-cock

What does half-cock mean?
Half-cock means not with full vigour, half-heartedly.
What part of speech is half-cock?
Half-cock is an adverb.

Words near half-cock in the dictionary

  1. half-century
  2. half-chair
  3. half-chance
  4. half-chances
  5. half-clammed
  6. half-cock
  7. half-cocked
  8. half-colonel
  9. half-colonels
  10. half-court
  11. half-court line

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: half-cock (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: “half-cock.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/half-cock. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.