half-naked

English

A half-naked woman.

Alternative forms

• half naked

Etymology

From Middle English half naked, from Old English healfnacod, from Proto-Germanic *halbanakwadaz; equivalent to half- +‎ naked.

Pronunciation

• Audio (Australia):

  (file)

Adverb

half-naked (not comparable)

1. (Can we verify⁽⁺⁾ this sense?) (idiomatic) With very few clothes on; revealing lots of one's body.

Adjective

half-naked (not comparable)

1. With very few clothes on.
   • 1847, George W[illiam] M[acArthur] Reynolds, “Old Death”, in The Mysteries of London, volume III (volume I, Second Series), London: G. Vickers, […], →OCLC, page 66, column 1:

     Tim dressed himself in rags yesterday, and went out disguised as a beggar half-naked and without shoes or stockings. He robbed a gentleman and a lady of a watch and a purse.

   • 1859, Snowden's Magistrates Assistant, page 87:

     […] going about the county half-naked, but having good clothes, perhaps sent forward to the lodging-house by his jomer (girl); this is very often a profitable trade; the shallow-cove of course selling all the clothes he does not need himself.

   • 1960, Stephen Lister [pseudonym; Digby George Gerahty], chapter 12, in In Search of Paradise, London: Peter Davies, →OCLC, page 162:

     Back there in the rolling, olive-clad hills is a splendid region of whose existence most of the visitors to the Riviera are unaware. There are no garish restaurants or casinos, no hot doggeries or Slopsy-kola signs, no half-naked women or twitching varicose veins being paraded.

   • 2009 October 13, “Train drags mooner half-naked along tracks”, in Sydney Morning Herald:

Synonyms

• seminude, semi-nude
• semi-naked, seminaked

Derived terms

• half-nakedly
• half-nakedness

Translations

with very few clothes on

• Azerbaijani: yarımlüt, yarımçılpaq
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 半裸體 / 半裸体 (zh) (bànluǒtǐ)

• Czech: polonahý
• Esperanto: duonnuda
• Estonian: poolalasti
• Finnish: puolialaston (fi)
• French: à moitié nu (fr), demi-nu (fr)
• Galician: semiespido m, semiespida f
• German: halbnackt (de)
• Greek: ημίγυμνος (el) (imígymnos)
• Hungarian: félmeztelen (hu)
• Italian: seminudo m, seminuda f
• Japanese: 半裸の (ja) (はんらの, hanra no), 半裸体の (はんらたいの, hanratai no)
• Latin: sēminūdus
• Lithuanian: pusnuogis m
• Old English: healfnacod
• Polish: półgoły, półnagi (pl)
• Portuguese: seminu
• Russian: полуго́лый (ru) (polugólyj)
• Spanish: semidesnudo
• Swedish: halvnaken (sv)

References

• “half-naked”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.