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usage - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

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

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

usage (countable and uncountable, plural usages)

  1. Habit, practice.
    1. 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.
    2. (uncountable) Custom, tradition. [from 14th c.]
  2. Utilization.
    1. The act of using something; use, employment. [from 14th c.]

      • 2025 February 19, 'Industry Insider', “South West boost”, in RAIL, number 1029, page 68, about the Falmouth branch:

        Demand continues to increase, and in 2023-24 recorded usage was higher than pre-COVID, with 384,000 passenger journeys in total (of which 247,000 were at the town location). At the other end of the branch, Truro station had usage of 1.19 million, of which 255,000 were recorded as interchange passengers.

    3. 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.]
      2. Prevailing language style: how words are used among a populace.

        In descriptive fact, word senses are established by usage.

      4. Choice of language style (made by a speaker or writer).
        usage prescriptions

        In prescriptive ideal, writers will optimize their usage.

    4. (now archaic) Action towards someone; treatment, especially in negative sense. [from 16th c.]

      • 1693, [John Locke], “§115”, in Some Thoughts Concerning Education, London: […] A[wnsham] and J[ohn] 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

habit or accepted practice

  • “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.

From Latin ūsus + -age. Compare Medieval Latin usagium.

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)

usage m (plural usages)

  1. habit; custom

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

  1. usage; use
  2. habit; custom