usage

Noun

1. Habit, practice.
   • [S]everal young people sung sacred music in the churchyard at night, which it seems is an usage here. - 1792, James Boswell, in Danziger & Brady (eds.), Boswell: The Great Biographer (Journals 1789–1795), Yale 1989, p....
   • Mrs. Wickam, agreeably to the usage of some ladies in her condition, pursued […] the subject, without any compunction. - 1846 October 1 – 1848 April 1, Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son, London: Bradbury and Evans, […],...

   1. A custom or established practice.

   2. (uncountable) Custom, tradition.

2. Utilization.
   • 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...

   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.

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

      • In descriptive fact, word senses are established by usage.

   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.

      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.

      • Whose sharp provokement them incenst so sore, / That both were bent t'avenge his usage base […] - 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie,...
      • 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 - 1693,...