disused

disused

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˌdɪsˈjuːzd/

Verb

disused

1. simple past tense and past participle of disuse

Adjective

disused (not comparable)

1. No longer in use.
   • 1589, George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie, Chapter 14,

     But as time & experience do reforme euery thing that is amisse, so this bitter poeme called the old Comedy, being disused and taken away, the new Comedy came in place, more ciuill and pleasant a great deale and not touching any man by name, but in a certain generalitie glancing at euery abuse,

   • 1815 February 24, [Walter Scott], “Chapter 37”, in Guy Mannering; or, The Astrologer. […], volume (please specify |volume=I, II, or III), Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and Archibald Constable and Co., […], OCLC 742335644:

     In Scotland the custom, now disused in England, of inviting the relations of the deceased to the interment is universally retained.

   • 1881, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, "Willowwood" in The House of Life, Stanza 2,

     And now Love sang: but his was such a song,

     So meshed with half-remembrance hard to free,

     As souls disused in death’s sterility

     May sing when the new birthday tarries long.

   • 1894, George Santayana, “On a Volume of Scholastic Philosophy” in Sonnets and Other Verses, New York: Duffield & Co., 1906, p. 55,

     The breath that stirred his lips he soon resigned

     To windy chaos, and we only find

     The garnered husks of his disusèd words.

   • 1933 January 9, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter 19, in Down and Out in Paris and London, London: Victor Gollancz […], OCLC 2603818:

     The tables, for instance, were to be covered with baize, but when the patron found that baize was expensive he bought instead disused army blankets, smelling incorrigibly of sweat.

   • 1956, Rose Macaulay, The Towers of Trebizond, New York: New York Review Books, 2003, Chapter 9, p. 72,

     […] the disused, wrecked Byzantine churches that brooded, forlorn, lovely, ravished and apostate ghosts, about the hills and shores of that lost empire.

   • 1997, Toni Morrison, Paradise, New York: Knopf, p. 172,

     All around in shadow lurked the shapes of trunks, wooden boxes, furniture, disused and broken.

   • 2020 January 2, Graeme Pickering, “Fuelling the changes on Teesside rails”, in Rail, page 61, photo caption:

     The old station buildings and train shed at Redcar Central were taken out of use around 30 years ago and became a business centre, but are currently disused. Redcar & Cleveland Council has plans to improve the station, including better passenger facilities and retail units.

Synonyms

• antiquated, defunct, outdated; see also Thesaurus:obsolete

Translations

no longer in use

Danish: nedlagt, som ikke bruges mere Finnish: käytöstä poistettu French: désuet (fr) Georgian: please add this translation if you can Italian: desueto (it) Norwegian: Bokmål: nedlagt Polish: nieużywany m Portuguese: desusado (pt) Spanish: desusado (es)