Other forms: halves, halved, halving
To halve something is to cut it into two equal parts. One knife stroke down the middle.
It also means to reduce by half, which is the commoner sense in news and business, so halving the deficit means cutting it to fifty per cent. Recipes use the first sense constantly, as in halve the tomatoes. Golf has a technical sense, since halving a hole means both players take the same number of shots. Note the spelling, since half becomes halve as a verb and halves in the plural.
Proto-Germanic
*halbijaną — to halve
Proto-West Germanic
*halbijan
Old English
hilfan
Middle English
halven
English, today
halve
Built from
From Middle English halven, helven, from Old English hilfan, helfan, hielfan (“to halve, divide in two”), from Proto-West Germanic halbijan, from Proto-Germanic halbijaną (“to halve”), from Proto-Germanic halbaz (“half”). Cognate with Middle Dutch halven (“to halve”), Middle High German halben, helben (“to halve”). Compare also West Frisian helte (“to halve”), Dutch halveren (“to halve”), German Low German halberen (“to halve”), German halbieren (“to halve”), Danish halvere (“to halve”), Swedish halvera (“to halve”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA