half: one of the two parts something splits into when it is divided down the middle, or a portion measured as one half of a whole
This word names a half: one of the two parts something splits into when it is cut down the middle. It comes from a verb meaning to divide something in two, so it always looks back at a whole that has been split, not merely at some small share of it.
Most of its appearances sit where an exact half matters. The best known is the "half a shekel" every Israelite paid when the people were counted (Exodus 30:13, 30:15; 38:26), a fixed contribution toward the sanctuary. The same precision shows up when the spoils of the Midianite war are split evenly between the soldiers and the rest of the community (Numbers 31:29, 31:30, 31:42, 31:47), when the priest's daily grain offering is burned half in the morning and half in the evening (Leviticus 6:20), and when the recipe for the holy anointing oil calls for half as much sweet cinnamon as myrrh (Exodus 30:23).
It also marks half of things other than measured amounts: the "half-tribe" of Manasseh that settled apart from the rest (Joshua 21:25; 1 Chronicles 6:61, 6:70), the commander set over half the royal chariots (1 Kings 16:9), and the public reading of the law that ran from daybreak until midday, literally "the half of the day" (Nehemiah 8:3).
Hebrew has a more common and more flexible word for half, חֵצִי, which does most of the ordinary work; this word tends to appear where a formal or carefully measured division is in view. The two even stand side by side in 1 Chronicles 6:61, which speaks of the half-tribe that is "the half of Manasseh."