half-hearted

British  

adjective

1. without enthusiasm or determination

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Other Word Forms

• half-heartedness
  noun
• half-heartedly
  adverb

Explanation

Use the adjective half-hearted to describe someone whose heart is not really in what they are doing. If you're a half-hearted member of your school marching band, you're not very excited about playing your tuba during halftime at football games. You might show up for awkward family dinners with your strange cousins, but you don't look forward to it and you can't wait until it's over. You're a half-hearted participant, and when your weird relatives leave, you probably give a half-hearted wave goodbye. The word can also be spelled "halfhearted."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

half-hearted

The bank expects a leaner Porsche to emerge after years of half-hearted efficiency measures.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 9, 2026

And these memos lay bare the extent to which the work product underpinning these decisions is often half-hearted and vibes-based; animated more by grievance and hurt feelings than neutral legal rules.

From Slate ● Apr. 21, 2026

So by those standards, what the California Highway Patrol discovered when they pulled over a driver in the carpool lane in West Covina recently would be half-hearted.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 17, 2026

“You start to wonder how many times they can sell us exactly the same half-hearted commitment,” added Levin, who is now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

From Salon ● Nov. 5, 2025

Then gradually, people got bored and the pranks became more half-hearted, until one day it struck me there hadn’t been any for over a week.

From "Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro