usage
See also: usagé
English
Alternative forms
- usuage (obsolete)
Etymology
From Middle English usage, from Anglo-Norman and Old French usage.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ˈjuːsɪd͡ʒ/, /ˈjuːzɪd͡ʒ/
Audio (US) (file)
Noun
usage (countable and uncountable, plural usages)
- Habit, practice.
- A custom or established practice. [from 14th c.]
- 1792, James Boswell, in Danziger & Brady (eds.), Boswell: The Great Biographer (Journals 1789–1795), Yale 1989, p. 170:
- [S]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 145080417:
- 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. [from 14th c.]
- A custom or established practice. [from 14th c.]
- Utilization.
- The act of using something; use, employment. [from 14th c.]
- 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. [from 14th c.]
- (now archaic) Action towards someone; treatment, especially in negative sense. [from 16th c.]
- 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, OCLC 960102938:
- 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[wnsham] and J[ohn] Churchill, […], OCLC 1161614482:
- 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
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Derived terms
- usage dictionary
- usage guide
- usage label
- usage lexicography
- usage note
- usage panel
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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- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked
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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
- Gause, agues, gause, suage
French
Etymology
From Latin ūsus + -age. Compare Medieval Latin usagium.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /y.zaʒ/
audio (file)
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
- d'usage
- en usage
- faire usage
- hors d'usage
Related terms
- usager
See also
- descriptif, normatif
Further reading
- “usage”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.
Anagrams
- auges, sauge, suage
Middle French
Noun
usage m (plural usages)
- habit; custom
Old French
Noun
usage m (oblique plural usages, nominative singular usages, nominative plural usage)
- usage; use
- habit; custom