Timeline for What does “half try” mean?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
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| Jan 14, 2013 at 23:48 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @jwpat7: Good point. I just happened to look at like followed by give, where it was obvious that many of the first (and none of the second) were the "negating" sense. And practically all instances of doesn't half look seem to be the "emphatic" sense. It's an intriguing question overall (does the specific verb matter? is usage changing? for example) but interpreting any one specific instance seems pretty irrelevant to me in an ELU context. | |
| Jan 14, 2013 at 23:29 | comment | added | James Waldby - jwpat7 | The statistics on “didn’t half try” differ sharply from of those for “I won’t half give”; about 90% of the instances I looked at mean "didn't try hard", and a few mean "tried hard" rather than "only halfway trying". | |
| Jan 14, 2013 at 22:18 | history | edited | FumbleFingers | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jan 14, 2013 at 21:49 | history | answered | FumbleFingers | CC BY-SA 3.0 |