halfdead
English edit
Alternative forms edit
Etymology edit
From Middle English halfdede, from Old English healfdēad (“half-dead”), from Proto-Germanic *halbadaudaz (“halfdead”), equivalent to half- + dead. Cognate with West Frisian healdea (“halfdead”), Dutch halfdood (“halfdead”), German Low German halvdood (“halfdead”), German halbtot (“halfdead”), Swedish halvdöd (“halfdead”).
Adjective edit
halfdead (not comparable)
- Halfway dead; only partially alive.
- 1999, Patti Massman, Susan Rosser, A Matter of Betrayal:
- But even after he was beyond the danger zone, he still felt halfdead.
- 2009, Kristin Cashore, Fire:
- Until the day King Nax had seized him and shattered his legs—not broken them, but shattered them, eight men taking turns with a mallet—and then sent him home, halfdead, to his wife, Aliss, in the northern Dells.
- 2010, Wayne Gordon, Who Is My Neighbor?:
- Some may be halfdead physically; they need people to visit them in the hospital or in their homes. But there are many more who are halfdead in other ways.
- 2010, Robert A Gagnon, The Bible and Homosexual Practice:
- [...] from a vantage point of security, the lawyer is taught to ask the question from the vantage point of one lying halfdead by the side of the road.
Translations edit
halfway dead; partially alive
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