Разделить медовик пополам, пожалуйста

What does “пополам” mean in Russian?

Пополам means “in half” or “fifty-fifty”: разделить медовик пополам is “split the honey cake in half,” and счёт пополам is “split the bill.” At its core is пол, an old word for “half” that is still everywhere in Russian. Once you spot it, полчаса (half an hour), полкило (half a kilo), полдень (noon, “half-day”) and полночь (midnight, “half-night”) all make sense at a glance.

In the clip a customer orders a latte and a медовик, the layered honey cake that is a fixture of Russian cafés, and asks for it пополам. Then comes the twist. The customer asks whether the barista has any brothers or sisters, hears нет, я единственный ребёнок в семье (“no, I’m an only child”), and asks to have the colleague who grew up with a brother do the cutting instead. Anyone who has shared dessert with a sibling knows why. Пополам also turns up in the idiom с горем пополам, literally “half with grief,” which means “just barely”: сдал экзамен с горем пополам is “scraped through the exam.”