usage

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See also: usagé

English

English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia

Alternative forms

Etymology

From Middle English usage, from Anglo-Norman and Old French usage.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ˈjuːsɪd͡ʒ/, /ˈjuːzɪd͡ʒ/
  • (file)

Noun

usage (countable and uncountable, plural usages)

  1. Habit, practice.
    1. 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.
    2. (uncountable) Custom, tradition.
  2. Utilization.
    1. The act of using something; use, employment.
    2. 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.
    3. (now archaic) Action towards someone; treatment, especially in negative sense.

Derived terms

Translations

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

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)

  1. usage, use
  2. (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

Anagrams

Middle French

Noun

usage m (plural usages)

  1. habit; custom

Old French

Noun

usage oblique singularm (oblique plural usages, nominative singular usages, nominative plural usage)

  1. usage; use
  2. habit; custom