Word.ws English Dictionary

half-jokingly

half-jokingly adverb: with an element of jest, but fundamentally in earnest.

Adverb

half-jokingly (not comparable)

  1. With an element of jest, but fundamentally in earnest.
    • I wrote a piece, half-jokingly, for The Independent suggesting that it was all part of a cunning plan by ministers to deter people from using the railways. […] I now suspect this was rather closer to the truth than I had thought.2023 July 26, Christian Wolmar, “Closing ticket offices to lead to 'catch-22' for passengers”, in RAIL, number 988, page 42

Origin of half-jokingly

From half- + jokingly.

Questions about half-jokingly

What does half-jokingly mean?
Half-jokingly means with an element of jest, but fundamentally in earnest.
What part of speech is half-jokingly?
Half-jokingly is an adverb.

Words near half-jokingly in the dictionary

  1. half-Jews
  2. half-joke
  3. half-joked
  4. half-jokes
  5. half-joking
  6. half-jokingly
  7. half-kirtle
  8. half-kirtles
  9. half-landing
  10. half-landings
  11. half-length

Source and license

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