Timeline for What is the word for "dividing into two unequal parts"?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
15 events
when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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Feb 19 at 1:15 | answer | added | engineerX | timeline score: 0 | |
Jun 3, 2019 at 3:06 | answer | added | Ian B | timeline score: 0 | |
May 5, 2015 at 19:23 | answer | added | Cowboy | timeline score: -1 | |
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
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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 |