Haddy (n.): haddock. ‘With cockles and haddies at the door, and you only having to “pick ‘em out”’ (Shimmin 1863: 206). See Finny Addy.

Haines (int.): shout of retreat. ‘Intimation of sudden retreat. Heard in Liverpool, whence it arrived from New York’ (Ware 1909: 149). *NR; derivation unknown.

Half (adv.): intensifier, depending on context. ‘I have to sail, though I don't mind telling you I don't half like it’ (Hanley 2009 [1940]: 121). ‘You aren't half mean, Mam’ (Bleasdale 1975: 69). ‘They're arf ‘angin’ out o’ yer tunnel’ [mouth] (Sinclair 1999 [1930s–e40s]: 126). ‘Half would've sworn that’ (Sampson 2002: 172). ‘He'd be half: “Here y'are bollocks”’ (Sampson 2002: 195). Recorded adverbially from Old English; this complicated term, common in l.20c. Liverpool speech, varies from meaning ‘completely and utterly’ to ‘not at all’.

Half a dollar (n.): two shillings and sixpence. ‘It'll cost you half a dollar to get one not a tenth as good’ (Hanley 2009 [1936]: 537). ‘2/6d: A Tosheroon, Half a Dollar’ (Minard 1972: 86). ‘It's worth half a dollar to the winners’ (Fagan 2007 [1950s]: 12). See dollar.

Half-bar (n.): ten shillings. ‘A ten shilling note [is generally known] as a “half-bar”’ (‘Postman’ 1937a: 6). ‘Alf a bar. Ten shillings’ (Shaw et al. 1966: 34). ‘10/-. Half a Quid, Half a Bar’ (Minard 1972: 86). See bar.

Half-caste (n. and adj.): derogatory epithet meaning mixed-‘race’. ‘Negroes, Chinese, Mulattoes, Filipinos, almost every nationality under the sun, most of them boasting white wives and large half-caste families’ (O'Mara 1934: 11). ‘I'm a bastard and you're a half caste’ (Jerome 1948: 138). ‘Half-castes who seem to be despised by both their white and coloured neighbours’ (Kerr 1958: 115). ‘Marko was Liverpudlian and half-caste’ (Murari 1975: 13). ‘A West Indian? An African? A half-caste?’ (McClure 1980: 113). ‘“Half castes” were backward, inferior, and incompetent’ (Lees 2013: 164). Recorded from l.18c.; from ‘caste’, ‘race, lineage’, from Spanish ‘casta’, ultimately Latin ‘castus’, ‘pure, unpolluted’.