abuses

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of abuse.

   Investigators uncovered a pattern of financial abuses spanning many years.

   The commission was created to address human rights abuses across the region.

   Note

   Here the noun is counted: each abuse becomes a separate act, practice or custom. The singular can name a general condition, but the plural lists cases, which is why it so often sits behind a qualifier, as in financial abuses or human rights abuses. It shares its spelling with the present-tense verb, and a determiner or modifier marks the noun reading: the abuses, such abuses.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of abuse.

   The manager routinely abuses his staff with impossible deadlines.

   Whenever he gets the chance, he abuses the trust people place in him.

   Note

   Every sense of the verb is transitive, so abuses always needs an object, and that object largely decides the meaning. Someone abuses a privilege or a trust when they misuse it. They abuse a person when they maltreat or revile them. They abuse a drug when they take it for a purpose other than the one intended. Read the object first, and the sense follows.

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