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The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.

half-baked

PRONUNCIATION: hăf' bākt', häf'-
ADJECTIVE: 1. Only partly baked. 2. Informal Insufficiently thought out; ill-conceived: a half-baked scheme. 3. Informal Exhibiting a lack of good judgment or common sense: a half-baked visionary.


One of my all-time favorite quotes is from the movie The Graduate starring Dustin Hoffman as Benjamin Braddock:

Father: "Benjamin, is this another one of your half-baked ideas?"

Benjamin: "No, this one's completely baked."

Online Etymology Dictionary:

half-baked in sense of "silly" is from 1855

So, half-baked does not seem as old as harebrained.

Hairbrained doesn't require the same prep-time and preheating the oven that half-baked does.

ok lets not split hairs guys. Lets just be tonsorially correct.

mark the-hare-brained Bailey
Half-baked requires NO oven pre-heating which is Why things are half-baked.

Half-baked requires NO oven pre-heating which is Why things are half-baked.

Given the choice, I'd rather split a hare than a hair. I could jug my half and enjoy it with some half-baked clams, or baked half-clams, and neither a hide nor a hair in sight. Coz if it were, it would be an hair apparent.

-- PW (paying homage to a joke from the turn of the 20th century: What's the difference between the Prince of Wales and a monkey? One is the heir apparent; the other is a hairy parent. OK, so folks were a lot easier to amuse back then...

Depending on your point of view, the Prince is a or is no laughing matter. Perhaps the Queen is trying to hang around until her grandson is the heir.