Word.ws English Dictionary

abus'd

abus'd is the simple past and past participle of abuse.

Meaning of abuse

Verb

abuse (third-person singular simple present abuses, present participle abusing, simple past and past participle abused)

  1. (transitive) To put to a wrong use; to misapply; to use improperly; to use for a wrong purpose or end; to pervert
    • He abused his authority.
  2. (transitive) To injure; to maltreat; to hurt; to treat with cruelty, especially repeatedly.
    • Blows with the fist should be given on the back of the woman, which she is sitting on the lap of the man, and she should give blows in return, abusing the man as if she were angry, and making the cooing and the weeping sounds.1883, Richard F[rancis] Burton, transl. and editor, Karma Sutra
    Synonyms:
    maltreat, injure, annoy, bewound, damage, damnify, dere, do damage to, do for, do ill
  3. (transitive) To attack with coarse language; to insult; to revile; malign; to speak in an offensive manner to or about someone; to disparage.
    • The […] tellers of news abused the general.1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter XIV, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume (please specify |volume=I to V), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and...
  4. (transitive) To imbibe a drug for a purpose other than it was intended; to intentionally take more of a drug than was prescribed for recreational reasons; to take illegal drugs habitually.
  5. (archaic, transitive) To violate; defile; to rape; (reflexive) to masturbate.
    • Like Angels life was then mens happy cace;
      But later ages pride, like corn-fed ſteed,
      Abuſd her plenty, and fat ſwolne encreace
      To all licentious luſt, and gan exceed1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 16, page 276
  6. (obsolete, transitive) Misrepresent; adulterate.
    • Believe me, sir, he hath been abused, grossly abused to you.1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

See all 15 meanings of abuse

Questions about abus'd

What is abus'd the simple past and past participle of?
Abus'd is the simple past and past participle of abuse.

Words near abus'd in the dictionary

  1. aburton
  2. Aburtos
  3. ABUs
  4. Abus gun
  5. Abus guns
  6. abus'd
  7. abusability
  8. abusable
  9. abusage
  10. abusages
  11. abuse

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: abus'd (page history and authors); abuse (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “abus'd.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/abus%27d. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.