usages

Noun

usage (countable and uncountable, plural usages)

1. A custom or established 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. 170
2. (uncountable) Custom, tradition.
3. The act of using something; use, employment.
   • 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 had usage of 1.19 million, of which 255,000 were recorded as interchange...2025 February 19, 'Industry Insider', “South West boost”, in RAIL, number 1029, page 68, about the Falmouth branch
4. Prevailing language style: how words are used among a populace.
   • In descriptive fact, word senses are established by usage.
5. Choice of language style (made by a speaker or writer).
   • usage prescriptions
6. (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, →OCLC