Etymology

half-baked

Today it means: Of a person or thing: incompletely developed or formed; not fully prepared or trained. Full definition →

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The story

The adjective is derived from half- (prefix meaning ‘incomplete, partial’) or half (adverb) + baked (“cooked by baking; (slang) drunk”, adjective). The noun is derived from adjective sense 1.2 (“of a person: having no common sense or intelligence”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.