halve
part of speech
verb (halve, halves, halved, halving)
meaning for a pupil
1) To halve something is to cut or divide it into two equal parts. tree →
2) To halve an amount is to make it half as big. tree →
3) Halved means made half as big, or cut into halves. tree →
sense in the lessons
An operation: divide by 2. In cooking: halve a recipe, halve an apple. In everyday life: halve the cost with a friend. In science: halve the water and see what happens. Phrases: «halve it», «cut in half», «halved the price».
examples
- Halve the 12 apples between two boys. tree →
- The price was halved to 20 dollars. tree →
- She halves the recipe. tree →
- If you halve 50, you get 25. tree →
- Mum halved the sandwich for me and my sister. tree →
- Halve the oranges and squeeze out the juice. tree →
- Walking to school halved the time I spend in traffic. tree →
- If we share the bill, we halve the cost. tree →
note
Halve means ÷ 2. Trap: «halved to 20» gives the new amount, so the old amount was 40; «halved by» is unusual and still means ÷ 2. Spelling: halve is the verb, half is the noun; «halves» is both the verb form (she halves) and the plural of half (two halves). Say «hahv» — the l is silent.
In the corpora
- Learning a family together halves the work.
- A helmet that fits well can more than halve the chance of a serious head injury in a bike crash.
- "A problem shared is a problem halved" is a saying meaning that talking about a problem makes it feel smaller.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «halve» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.