HalfPie.net
Title
half-pie
Description
About half-pie: the word, the site, and me
The term “half-pie” is a piece of New Zealand slang. Here’s the entry from Harry Orsman’s excellent A Dictionary of Modern New Zealand Slang:
. Half-and-half; neither one thing nor the other; imperfect; incomplete or incompletely realised; unsatisfactory. 1911 e.g. It was a sort of half-pie gate made of iron bed-ends. As an adverb, in some way; partly; half-heartedly. 1949 e.g. Simon was only half-pie simple.
I like this word for several reasons. Firstly, it’s a good New Zealand word that is in use nowhere else. Secondly, it is useful for that kiwi ironic self-deprecation that we seem to be so good at as a nation. And thirdly, it’s partly a borrowing from Māori, so in a way the use of it is a small nod to towards the only unique cultural strand New Zealand has. In fact when you think about it the very word itself describes its own condition, a proud mongrel adjective that we could apply to the whole country.
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