usage
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See also: usagé
English
Alternative forms
Etymology
From Middle English usage, from Anglo-Norman and Old French usage.
Pronunciation
Noun
usage (countable and uncountable, plural usages)
- Habit, practice.
- A custom or established practice.
- 1792, James Boswell, in Danziger & Brady (eds.), Boswell: The Great Biographer (Journals 1789–1795), Yale 1989, p. 170:
- everal young people sung sacred music in the churchyard at night, which it seems is an usage here.
- 1846 October 1 – 1848 April 1, Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son, London: Bradbury and Evans, , published 1848, →OCLC:
- Mrs. Wickam, agreeably to the usage of some ladies in her condition, pursued […] the subject, without any compunction.
- 1792, James Boswell, in Danziger & Brady (eds.), Boswell: The Great Biographer (Journals 1789–1795), Yale 1989, p. 170:
- (uncountable) Custom, tradition.
- A custom or established practice.
- Utilization.
- The act of using something; use, employment.
- The established custom of using language; the ways and contexts in which spoken and written words are used, especially by a certain group of people or in a certain region.
- (now archaic) Action towards someone; treatment, especially in negative sense.
- 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. , London: [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
- Whose sharp provokement them incenst so sore, / That both were bent t'avenge his usage base […]
- 1693, [John Locke], “§115”, in Some Thoughts Concerning Education, London: A and J Churchill, , →OCLC:
- Satisfy a child by a constant course of your care and kindness, that you perfectly love him, and he may by degrees be accustom'd to bear very painful and rough usage from you, without flinching or complaining
Derived terms
Translations
act of using something; use
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habit or accepted practice
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the way words are spoken or written in a community
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References
- “usage” in R.R.K. Hartmann and Gregory James, Dictionary of Lexicography, Routledge, 1998.
- Sydney I. Landau (2001), Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography, 2nd ed., Cambridge University Press, p 217.
Anagrams
French
Etymology
From Latin ūsus + -age. Compare Medieval Latin usagium.
Pronunciation
Noun
usage m (plural usages)
- usage, use
- (lexicography) the ways and contexts in which spoken and written words are actually used, determined by a lexicographer's intuition or from corpus analysis (as opposed to correct or proper use of language, proclaimed by some authority)
Derived terms
Related terms
See also
Further reading
- “usage”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé , 2012.
Anagrams
Middle French
Noun
usage m (plural usages)
Old French
Noun
usage oblique singular, m (oblique plural usages, nominative singular usages, nominative plural usage)