Word.ws English Dictionary

half-embrace

half-embrace noun: a partial hug.

Noun

half-embrace (plural half-embraces)

  1. A partial hug.
    • “But throughout these calamities.“ huskily continued Don Benito. painfully turning in the half-embrace of his servant. “I have to thank those Negroes you see, who, though to your inexperienced eyes appearing unruly, have, indeed, conducted themselves with less restlessness than even their owner...1855, Herman Melville, Benito Cereno
  2. An ambivalent acceptance or adoption.
    • This half-embrace of failure, as Coward suggests, is something the British like to think of as distinctly British.2012, Oliver Burkeman, The Antidote, Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking, →ISBN

Verb

half-embrace (third-person singular simple present half-embraces, present participle half-embracing, simple past and past participle half-embraced)

  1. (transitive) To embrace or wrap around partially.
    • Flowers destitute of ray; leaves pinnatised, toothed, half-embracing the stem.1835, William Withering, An Arrangement of British Plants
  2. (transitive) To adopt in an ambivalent or partial manner.
    • One solution, which his own England would later half-embrace, was socialism or collectivism, “in which the means of production” are “in the hands of the political officers of the community.2010, Benjamin Wiker, 10 Books Every Conservative Must Read: Plus Four Not to Miss and One Impostor, →ISBN

Forms of half-embrace

Noun
pluralhalf-embraces
Verb
third-person singular presenthalf-embraces
present participlehalf-embracing
past participlehalf-embraced
pasthalf-embraced

Origin of half-embrace

From half- + embrace.

Questions about half-embrace

What does half-embrace mean?
Half-embrace means a partial hug.
What part of speech is half-embrace?
Half-embrace can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of half-embrace?
The plural of half-embrace is half-embraces.

Words near half-embrace in the dictionary

  1. half-edge
  2. half-edges
  3. half-elf
  4. half-elven
  5. half-elves
  6. half-embrace
  7. half-embraced
  8. half-embraces
  9. half-embracing
  10. half-equation
  11. half-equations

Source and license

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