halfdead
adjEtymology 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”).
1
Halfway dead; only partially alive.
- But even after he was beyond the danger zone, he still felt halfdead.1999, Patti Massman, Susan Rosser, A Matter of Betrayal:
- 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.2009, Kristin Cashore, Fire:
2 more examples
- 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, Wayne Gordon, Who Is My Neighbor?:
- [...] 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.2010, Robert A Gagnon, The Bible and Homosexual Practice: