to do by halves
- idiom
- UK
:
hacer las cosas a medias
- He tends to do by halves and leave jobs unfinished.
Examples
-
If you’re going to help, don’t do by halves—put your heart into it.
-
Don't do by halves when it comes to your education!
-
She never does by halves when it comes to organizing an event.
-
He never does by halves in his projects.
-
If you're going to help, don't do by halves—commit fully to the task.
-
She always puts her best effort into everything; she never does by halves.
-
When he builds furniture, he never does by halves; every piece is crafted with care.
Synonyms
To do something with little effort or care
Antonyms
How Thorough
Surface Forms
Morphology
The notion of performing only part of a task is signalled by 'do' + 'half(s)', so a learner who knows 'half' can infer a sense of partial or incomplete action; 'by' creates the adverbial pattern indicating manner. However, the fixed collocation 'do by halves' and its pragmatic sense of careless or insufficient effort are not fully predictable from the parts alone (though cross-linguistic parallels like Spanish 'hacer las cosas a medias' make the idea somewhat accessible), so it is only partially transparent.
Etymology
Do by halves may come from the simple picture of someone who does only one half of a job, like painting one side of a fence and stopping. That's why it means 'to do something incompletely or without full effort'.