halfheartedly

• half-heartedly

From halfhearted + -ly.

halfheartedly (comparative more halfheartedly, superlative most halfheartedly)

1. With little enthusiasm or interest.

   Antonyms: wholeheartedly, enthusiastically

   Coordinate terms: unconvincedly; apathetically, indifferently, uninterestedly; mindlessly, thoughtlessly, rotely

   Near-synonyms: unenthusiastically, lukewarmly

   • 1881–1882, Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island, London; Paris: Cassell & Company, published 14 November 1883, →OCLC:

     This appeal seemed to produce some effect, for two of the fellows began to look here and there among the lumber, but half-heartedly, I thought, and with half an eye to their own danger all the time, while the rest stood irresolute on the road.

   • 1901 [1878], Leo Tolstoy, translated by Constance Garnett, Anna Karenina‎^[1]:

     “Oh, but I feel, and particularly just now—it’s your fault,” he said, pressing her hand—“that all that doesn’t count. I do it in a way halfheartedly. If I could care for all that as I care for you!... Instead of that, I do it in these days like a task that is set me.”

   • 2025 December 19, Jesse Arm, “Everyone Wants to Know What Gen Z Republicans Think. We Asked Them.”, in City Journal‎^[2], archived from the original on 19 December 2025:

     Extreme rhetoric often landed like another genre of Internet content—something to be halfheartedly consumed, laughed at, scrolled past, and then forgotten.