Word.ws English Dictionary

half-hearted

half-hearted is the alternative form of halfhearted.

Meaning of halfhearted

Adjective

halfhearted (comparative more halfhearted, superlative most halfhearted)

  1. Lacking full energy, effort, commitment, or resolve.
    • Near-synonym: half-assed
  2. (obsolete) Lacking in heart or beneficence; ungenerous; unkind.
    • such animals,
      Half-hearted creatures, as these are, your fox there1632 (first performance), Benjamin Jonson [i.e., Ben Jonson], “The Magnetick Lady: Or, Humors Reconcil’d. A Comedy […]”, in The Workes of Benjamin Jonson. The Second Volume. […] (Second Folio)...

Forms of half-hearted

comparativemore half-hearted
superlativemost half-hearted

Words formed from half-hearted

Questions about half-hearted

What is half-hearted the alternative form of?
Half-hearted is the alternative form of halfhearted.

Words near half-hearted in the dictionary

  1. half-half
  2. half-halt
  3. half-halts
  4. half-hardies
  5. half-hardy
  6. half-hearted
  7. half-heartedly
  8. half-heartedness
  9. half-hitch
  10. half-hitches
  11. half-holiday

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: half-hearted (page history and authors); halfhearted (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-hearted.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/half-hearted. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.