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Feb 19 at 1:15 answer added engineerX timeline score: 0
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Oct 8, 2013 at 22:07 comment added Howard Pautz I wonder too if 'halving' is pretty infrequent. Can't think of the last time I heard it, certainly haven't said it in decades, and read it here for the first time in years. (OK, sure, maybe I don't get out often enough and halve my time between work and play :-P )
Oct 7, 2013 at 1:05 review Close votes
Oct 7, 2013 at 16:12
Oct 7, 2013 at 0:45 answer added The Photon timeline score: 4
Oct 6, 2013 at 22:17 comment added ruakh @snailboat: I agree. Actually, offhand, I can't think of very many contexts where I would understand halve to mean "to divide into two halves"; it much more often means "to decrease by half".
Oct 6, 2013 at 16:14 comment added WendiKidd @J.R.'s right on the money, I think. Erel, if you give us the context in which you're trying to use this, we should be able to give you a word appropriate for that context. If you want an all-encompassing term, I don't think there's a common one; we use different words for different actions.
Oct 6, 2013 at 12:22 history tweeted twitter.com/#!/StackEnglishLL/status/386828825453412352
Oct 6, 2013 at 8:17 comment added user230 I think all native speakers know the word halving, but in many contexts it's simply not the right word.
Oct 6, 2013 at 8:17 history edited Mistu4u CC BY-SA 3.0
added 16 characters in body; edited title
Oct 6, 2013 at 8:08 comment added Mistu4u @J.R. I would say "halving" is less known than using "breaking/dividing into equal parts".
Oct 6, 2013 at 8:05 comment added J.R. You can always use break; if that word has too much ambiguity for your liking, you can say break in two. However, it's worth pointing out that the best word may be context-dependent. That is, I wouldn't necessarily use the same word to describe the way I would "divide" a pizza as I would to describe the way a bone broke. I might say the bone snapped in two, but I pruned the branch, or I sliced a piece of pizza, or I bit the candy bar (which divides it into two parts: the part in your mouth, and the part left in your hand).
Oct 6, 2013 at 8:00 answer added Mistu4u timeline score: 1
Oct 6, 2013 at 7:55 history asked Erel Segal-Halevi CC BY-SA 3.0