Half-embrace
noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A partial hug.
"“But throughout these calamities.“ huskily continued Don Benito. painfully turning in the half-embrace of his servant. “I have to thank those Negroes you see, who, though to your inexperienced eyes appearing unruly, have, indeed, conducted themselves with less restlessness than even their owner could have thought possible under such circumstances.""
- 2 An ambivalent acceptance or adoption.
"This half-embrace of failure, as Coward suggests, is something the British like to think of as distinctly British."
- 1 To embrace or wrap around partially. transitive
"Flowers destitute of ray; leaves pinnatised, toothed, half-embracing the stem."
- 2 To adopt in an ambivalent or partial manner. transitive
"One solution, which his own England would later half-embrace, was socialism or collectivism, “in which the means of production” are “in the hands of the political officers of the community."
Example
More examples"“But throughout these calamities.“ huskily continued Don Benito. painfully turning in the half-embrace of his servant. “I have to thank those Negroes you see, who, though to your inexperienced eyes appearing unruly, have, indeed, conducted themselves with less restlessness than even their owner could have thought possible under such circumstances.""
Etymology
From half- + embrace.
More for "half-embrace"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.