halfheartedly
advEtymology From halfhearted + -ly.
1
With little enthusiasm or interest.
- Near-synonyms: unenthusiastically, lukewarmly
- This appeal seemed to produce some effect, for two of the fellows began to look here and there among the lumber, but half-heartedly, I thought, and with half an eye to their own danger all the time, while the rest stood irresolute on the road.1881–1882, Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island, London; Paris: Cassell & Company, published 14 November 1883, →OCLC:
2 more examples
- “Oh, but I feel, and particularly just now—it’s your fault,” he said, pressing her hand—“that all that doesn’t count. I do it in a way halfheartedly. If I could care for all that as I care for you!... Instead of that, I do it in these days like a task that is set me.”1901 [1878], Leo Tolstoy, translated by Constance Garnett, Anna Karenina:
- Extreme rhetoric often landed like another genre of Internet content—something to be halfheartedly consumed, laughed at, scrolled past, and then forgotten.2025 December 19, Jesse Arm, “Everyone Wants to Know What Gen Z Republicans Think. We Asked Them.”, in City Journal, archived from the original on 19 Dec 2025:
- Related terms
- half-assedly