half dead
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Senses: examples: text: When Jupiter, in shape of Eagle, Came the young stripling to inveigle, And seizing him like any Sparrow With his Beak holding his Tiara, To make him sure as swift as Hobby, He bare him into Heaven's Lobby; Whilst the poor boy half dead with Fear, Writh'd back to view his Spiriter.
ref: 1675, Charles Cotton, Burlesque upon Burlesque: Or, The Scoffer Scoft:
text: […] the two ladies were more than half dead when, with the aſſiſtance of all the men about them, except Heurthofen, who did not appear, they were both carried on ſhore; […]
ref: 1794, Charlotte Smith, chapter IV, in The Banished Man. […], volume I, London: […] T[homas] Cadell, Jun. and W[illiam] Davies, (successors to Mr. [Thomas] Cadell) […], →OCLC, page 87:
text: “It’s very inconsiderate of you, St. Clare,” said the lady, “to insist on my talking and looking at things. You know I’ve been lying all day with the sick-headache; and there’s been such a tumult made ever since you came, I’m half dead.”
ref: 1851 June – 1852 April, Harriet Beecher Stowe, “Of Tom’s New Master, And Various Other Matters”, in Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly, volume I, Boston, Mass.: John P[unchard] Jewett & Company; Cleveland, Oh.: Jewett, Proctor & Worthington, published 20 March 1852, →OCLC, page 241:
text: A thing half dead, with weary arms astretch / For anything to cling to
ref: 1854, John Stanyan Bigg, Night and the Soul, London: Groombridge, Scene 5, p. 69:
text: Fancy again, Lady fisheresses (I appeal to good old Tory young ladies who land big salmon every autumn in or about the Gordon-Richmond estates in Scotland), how much jollier it is to see the monarch of the stream on the grass than to ‘rink’ at Prince’s, or to be carried round Belgravian drawing-rooms, half dead and quite knocked up, in the mazy waltz. Not that Prince’s is a bad place by any means, nor ballrooms either. / Now, is not this a romantic opening? I am going to talk about cockney fishing twenty years ago.
ref: 1876, Baily’s Magazine of Sports and Pastimes, volume XXVIII, number 192, Cornhill, London: A. H. Baily & Co., About Several Men Who Went A-Angling, pages 167–168:
text: Then the old woman filled her jar with milk, and went on her way rejoicing at her good fortune. But as she journeyed she met with the King of that country, who, having been a-hunting, had lost his way in the pathless plain. 'Give me a drink of water, good mother,' he cried, seeing the jar; 'I am half dead with thirst!' 'It is milk, my son,' replied the old woman; 'I got it yonder from a milken pond.'
ref: 1894, Flora Annie Steel, Tales of the Punjab, volume 1:
text: Now the smell of vodky, especially then when he was half dead with cold, troubled Nikita seriously.
ref: 1895, A. Hulme Beaman, transl., Master and Man, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton and Company, translation of original by Leo Tolstoy, page 67:
text: "Tea!" she said in a tiny voice. / "Wake up! It's nearly five." / Oh! Chintzy, chintzy cheeriness, / Half dead and half alive.
ref: 1931, John Betjeman, “Death in Leamington”, in Earl of Birkenhead [Frederick Winston Furneaux Smith, 2nd Earl of Birkenhead], compiler, John Betjeman's Collected Poems, London: John Murray, published 1958, →OCLC:
text: Thirty freaking minutes after we land, we blow up that Hellion freakjob, blow up the Sharkship, and Zero is half dead.”
ref: 2011, R. Handley B. Price, Manuitius Covenant: The Life and Death of Planet Earth, page 78:
text: Only a stone-hearted person could fail to have been moved by the multifaith parts of the service, and if you felt nothing when the choir sang Handel’s Zadok the Priest at the king’s anointment, you are either an algorithm or half dead.
ref: 6 May 2023, Rachel Cooke, “It was ludicrous but also magnificent: the coronation stirred every emotion”, in The Guardian:
glosses: Alternative form of halfdead.