Other forms: halted, halting, halts
To halt is to stop, suddenly and completely. The march halts at the barrier, the train halts between two stations, a raised hand halts the traffic.
It sits a step above stop in formality, and it lives in news and official language: halt production, halt the spread of the disease, a court order halting the sale. The noun is the half you meet more in ordinary speech, in the bus came to a halt, the talks ground to a halt, the referee called a halt. Halt! on its own is what a soldier or a guard shouts when you must not take one more step. There is also an old, nearly dead meaning: to be halt was to be lame, and that is where the whole word began.
1verbhaltTo stop moving, or to make something stop moving.
“The lorry halted at the level crossing.”
synonyms: stop, pull up
2verbsuspendTo stop an activity or a process, especially by an official decision.
“The council halted all building work on the site.”
3nouncompleteA complete stop.
“The lift came to a halt between the third and fourth floors.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
Also accepted in games: stop
Halt began as limping. Old English healtian meant "to be lame, walk with a limp", from Proto-West Germanic *haltōn, with cousins in Swedish halta. The stopping sense that everyone uses now came later, and it came out of the noun rather than the old verb.
Proto-West Germanic
*haltōn
Old English
healtian — to be lame, walk with a limp
Middle English
halten
English, today
halt
From Middle English halten, from Old English healtian (“to be lame, walk with a limp”), from Proto-West Germanic haltōn, related to halt. English usage in the sense of 'make a halt' is from the noun. Cognate with frr halte, Swedish halta.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA