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OneKitly

behalf

nouncommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//bɪˈhɑːf//
  • United Kingdom//bəˈhɑːf//
  • United States//bɪˈhæf//

The interest, benefit, or wellbeing of someone or something.

noun

  1. 1

    The interest, benefit, or wellbeing of someone or something.

    She appeared on behalf of the U.N. Secretary General at a conference held in behalf of the world's children.

    The one exception to this was William Hilhouse, who was widely regarded as the colonist with the greatest experience of the interior and its native inhabitants, on whose behalf he endlessly campaigned.

    The NUL, on the other hand, never felt that its position among civil rights organizations was threatened, and considered itself unique because of its historic commitment to advocacy on behalf of low-income African Americans.

  2. 2

    One's role or rightful place; stead or authority.

    He was not only my Representative who died on my behalf; He was my Substitute who died in my very stead.

    Which indeed is so true, that she herself may seek back for her own gain the dowry offered by another on her behalf, unless by chance he who offered it immediately (that is, at the time of offering or of promising) stipulated or made an agreement that the afore-mentioned dowry would be returned to him.

    The Agent shall have all of the powers, rights, discretions, elections, and authority conferred by statute, the common law, or rule of court or governmental agency that are reasonably necessary for the Agent to act on my behalf for any purpose.

    Hillary Clinton hasn’t hit the campaign trail yet on behalf of Democrats running in 2018, but that isn’t stopping Republicans from using the former 2016 Democratic presidential nominee as a reliable campaign boogeyman.

Etymology

From Middle English bihalve (“nearby”), from Old English bī healfe (“by [his/her] side”), from bī (“by”) + healfe (“side, half”), equivalent to be- + half.

Forms

plural
behalves, behalfs
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).