Word.ws English Dictionary

ill-use

/ɪlˈjuːz/

ill-use verb: to treat someone badly, cruelly or unkindly.

Verb

ill-use (third-person singular simple present ill-uses, present participle ill-using, simple past and past participle ill-used)

  1. To treat someone badly, cruelly or unkindly.
    • A Newcastle shunter, Goodchild, working at one end of Forth Goods Yard, was for some reason moved to the other end, with no loss of pay: he thought he was ill-used and ceased work, as did a number of sympathisers.1958 March, T. Preston, “North Eastern Memories”, in Railway Magazine, page 206

Noun

IPA/ɪlˈjuːs/

ill-use (uncountable)

  1. Bad, cruel or unkind treatment.

Forms of ill-use

third-person singular presentill-uses
present participleill-using
past participleill-used
pastill-used

Words that rhyme with ill-use

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about ill-use

What does ill-use mean?
Ill-use means to treat someone badly, cruelly or unkindly.
What part of speech is ill-use?
Ill-use can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce ill-use?
Ill-use is pronounced /ɪlˈjuːz/.
What is the past tense of ill-use?
The past tense of ill-use is ill-used.

Words near ill-use in the dictionary

  1. ill-treating
  2. ill-treatment
  3. ill-treats
  4. ill-usage
  5. ill-usages
  6. ill-use
  7. ill-used
  8. ill-uses
  9. ill-using
  10. ill-will
  11. ill-willed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ill-use (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-ill-use (alternative pronunciation).ogg, en-uk-ill-use.ogg.

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