half-merited

Updated: May 2, 2025

I was nettled, for I felt there was some justice in this sarcasm, and this, too, at the very moment I felt it was only half-merited: and not at all, perhaps, from an Englishman. But Sennit knew as much of the history of my country as he did of his own, having obtained all he had learned of either out of newspapers. Nevertheless, I succeeded in keeping silent.

James Fenimore Cooper - Miles Wallingford: Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore"

With malign relish, Banneker looked up in the Sunday advertising the leading theater display, went to the musical comedy there exploited, and presently devoted a column to giving it a terrific and only half-merited slashing for vapid and gratuitous indecency.

Samuel Hopkins Adams - Success: A Novel