usage
Pluralusages
- 1The act of using something; the employment of a thing for some purpose.
The contract limits usage of the software to a single device.
Energy usage in the building dropped sharply after the insulation was upgraded.
Similaruse, consumption, utilization, employment
Note
In reports and statistics, the act of using becomes a quantity. RAIL, in 2025, writes of "recorded usage" that was "higher than pre-COVID" and of a station that "had usage of 1.19 m." In this sense the word is something counted, totaled and compared from year to year. It pairs readily with measuring words such as recorded, total, higher and lower.
- 2The prevailing style of a language; the way words are actually used among a population of speakers and writers.
Like a footpath worn across a lawn: the route people actually take, whatever the paved walkway suggests.
Modern usage accepts 'they' as a pronoun for a single person.
Regional usage in the South gives some common words meanings outsiders find surprising.
Similarparlance, idiom, phraseology
Note
The collective sense, and the one descriptive linguists appeal to. It means what a whole community actually does with its words, as opposed to what rules say it should do. "In descriptive fact, word senses are established by usage": a dictionary records usage in this sense. It is custom applied to language. Its counterpart is one writer's own choices, and that is where prescription comes in.
- 3The choice of language style made by a particular speaker or writer.
The novelist's usage favors short, blunt sentences over ornate description.
His usage, dense with legal jargon, left half the jury confused.
Similarstyle, diction, phrasing, wording, language
Note
Narrowed to a single speaker or writer, the word becomes something to be judged rather than described. Here advice and correction take aim. Usage prescriptions belong to this sense, and so does the prescriptive ideal of writers who "optimize their usage." The community's usage is what people do; this sense is what one person chooses, and so it can be praised, faulted or improved.
- 4A custom or established practice, one that has become standard through long observance.
The court recognized the villagers' right to cross the field, established by ancient usage.
Tipping at restaurants is fixed by usage rather than by any statute.
Similarcustom, practice, convention, tradition, habit
Note
Here the word names one particular custom, so it can be counted and given an article. Boswell, in 1792, calls night singing in a churchyard "an usage here," with an rather than a. Dickens's Dombey and Son shows the construction it often keeps, "agreeably to the usage of" some group, a custom that belongs to someone. The word reached English through Middle English from Anglo-Norman and Old French.
- 5Custom or tradition; the accumulated practice that shapes how things have always been done.
The procession follows a route fixed by centuries of usage.
Usage, more than any written rule, determines how the ceremony unfolds.
Similarcustom, tradition, convention, practice
Less common meaning
- 6Action toward someone; the treatment a person receives, especially when it is harsh or unjust.
The apprentice ran away after months of ill usage by his master.
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, [John Locke], “§115”Note
This archaic sense means the way someone is dealt with, nearly always badly. Spenser's Faerie Queene (1596) has two characters bent on avenging "his usage base," and Locke in 1693 writes of a child learning to bear "rough usage." It lives mostly in pairings like these (rough, base, ill), and in modern prose it sounds deliberately old. Treatment is the everyday word.
Practice
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Origin
From Middle English "usage", which came from Anglo-Norman and Old French "usage".