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What is "habit"

Crossword clues for habit

habit
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
habit
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
fallen into the habit of
▪ He had fallen into the habit of having a coffee every time he passed the coffee machine.
irritating habit/characteristics/mannerisms
▪ She has an irritating habit of interrupting.
nasty habit
▪ Life has a nasty habit of repeating itself.
nasty habit
▪ Drivers often have a nasty habit of driving too close to cyclists.
sb’s eating habits (=the kinds of things they eat or drink regularly)
▪ The doctor asked me about my eating habits and how much I smoked.
unfortunate habit
▪ He has an unfortunate habit of repeating himself.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
bad
▪ Ever since I was a teenager, I have had the bad habit of pulling and twisting my hair.
▪ Many of these bad habits are started in infancy when parents rock and sing their babies to sleep.
▪ A person may develop bad habits that need correction.
▪ Most likely, only one or two bad habits permeate your writing.
▪ If you don't watch out, you can get a worse habit than the one you started with.
▪ Simply determine which structural bad habit is most pronounced and edit for that.
▪ The answer is to drop back to conscious competence every now and again to check things out and eradicate the bad habits.
▪ Creating strong word use is merely a matter of amending bad writing habits.
eating
▪ I said she had to change her lifestyle and eating habits or I would insist she came home.
▪ One of the problems of today's eating habits is that people expect food to last over longer periods.
▪ If you find this happening to your elderly parent, try to help her to reorganise her eating habits.
▪ We shall return later to the benefits of exercise, but first, let's examine our eating habits.
▪ I also tried to incorporate a strong element of freedom so that a long term eating habit could be created.
▪ I went back to my old eating habits and slowly put on more weight.
▪ Parents are trained to develop menus and eating habits based on this system so that a balanced and healthy diet is provided.
▪ The best way to improve your figure is to improve your eating habits.
good
▪ It shows yet again that good habits persist as do bad ones.
▪ This is a good habit to acquire to gain optimal athletic performance.
▪ Taking your own samples as the grain goes in is safer, more reliable and a good habit to acquire.
▪ However, computer resources will be in his life for ever, so good habits should be established now.
▪ If you develop good habits they will stand you in good stead in your business and managerial career.
▪ My problem is getting past the idea of a good habit.
▪ At a basic level it is necessary to foster an approach which emphasises responsibility, good manners and good working habits.
▪ Alexander said that careful personal hygiene and good eating habits are the best ways to prevent infection.
nasty
▪ Both subscriptions cost about £800 per year and both have the nasty habit of being so voluminous as to go largely unread.
▪ Although an attractive addition to a tank, it has a nasty habit of fighting with members of its own species.
▪ It is a simple enough message but one which has a nasty habit of being forgotten when companies decide to shed staff.
▪ Appraisal schemes have a nasty habit of becoming complex and over sophisticated.
▪ Yet unlikely figures often have a nasty habit of turning out to be true.
old
▪ As McKinsey laments, given half a chance they revert to old habits.
▪ But old habits die hard, and Apple has shown a proclivity to chase market share while hand-wringing over shrinking gross margins.
▪ The City has been quite good at throwing off old habits, less good at mastering new disciplines.
▪ It is hard to break the old habits.
▪ They have reverted to their old habits since then.
▪ But old habits are losing their hold on me.
▪ Why should we not? Old habits die hard.
▪ A lot of times defenses fall into old habits.
personal
▪ The first time I met a boy who wasn't completely gross in his personal habits, I was thrown into confusion.
▪ He later developed austere personal habits, his brother recalled.
▪ His personal habits are such that his chief following consists of unpaid tradesmen ....
▪ You have to manage yourself, what you wear, how you speak, what your personal habits are.
▪ Every small thing is noticed. Personal habits are becoming more pronounced.
▪ A man or woman whose social or personal habits are unconventional or uncertain is not likely to be risked.
smoking
▪ Main outcome measures - Prevalence of infection with oncogenic human papillomavirus and smoking habits.
▪ Parental attitude to smoking and peer influence are factors which affect both boys and girls taking up the smoking habit.
▪ Patients of both groups were comparable in their ages and in their smoking and drinking habits.
▪ Numerous studies have shown than most young smokers are influenced by their friends' and older siblings' smoking habits.
social
▪ But her characters are just a bit too typical in their social habits, their tastes and their personal dilemmas.
▪ Their social habits have fitted them to human society.
▪ There are other ways in which Alasitas customs mark changes in social habits.
▪ A man or woman whose social or personal habits are unconventional or uncertain is not likely to be risked.
▪ What is important is the structure of thought and social habit behind it.
▪ Adults follow fashion in clothes and social habits as assiduously as their children.
unfortunate
▪ For Rubberneck had the unfortunate habit of hanging around outside school play-yards.
▪ Alas, even the most well-meaning opera buffs have an unfortunate habit of making their favorite indoor sport sound impossibly complicated.
▪ Redundancy is more than an unfortunate habit, however, and results from four factors: 1.
■ NOUN
drug
▪ David was jailed for four years after robbing a petrol station to pay for his drug habit.
▪ She has a drug habit and puts her personal wants first.
▪ Ken Gillance, defending, said Summersgill became involved in dishonesty because he needed money to feed his drug habit.
▪ However, he collapsed under the pressure of expectation, compounded by an excessive drug habit.
▪ He had something of a drink problem and the beginnings of a drug habit.
▪ None of us has a drug habit or drinks heavily.
work
▪ More than a few of us got our first work experience and learned positive work habits in this manner.
▪ They fear that continued poor work habits will doom their children to a life-time of unfulfilled promise.
▪ Successful engineering students tended to be contemptuous of the work habits of lesser mortals.
▪ The follow-through not only helps children meet their responsibility, it also fosters the growth of good work habits and autonomy.
▪ Consider changing lunch and after work habits so you will have less contact with the individual concerned.
■ VERB
acquire
▪ This will safeguard against the student acquiring bad habits in these features of pronunciation.
▪ From parents, children can acquire habits and tastes that are peculiar if not exclusive to a particular class.
▪ Of course he acquired some better habits, such as that great liking for poetry and music.
▪ They may encourage young people to acquire a life-time habit of using buses and not bother with cars.
become
▪ After a short while, taking paper, glass and metals for recycling becomes a habit.
▪ This has become a welcome habit in recent years.
▪ Lying awake in the small hours, after falling asleep quickly, can become another maddening habit.
▪ Once clients have self-monitored for a while, it becomes a habit.
▪ This may seem a paradox and different from the usual pattern of learning, therefore it needs to become a habit.
▪ For most young people it is a passing phase which they will grow out of, but for some it can become a habit.
▪ It's becoming a family habit, I fear.
▪ They persuaded their father to let them use it to eat their porridge and this became a habit with them.
break
▪ In that context, will he break the habit of a lifetime and answer two questions straight?
▪ Overcoming Overeating may be a powerful way for some women to break a long habit of compulsive eating.
▪ So trying to break the habit actually increases the compulsion to smoke or to eat too much!
▪ I tried to break the habit, but must have failed.
▪ Patients who wore them were almost twice as likely to break the habit as those who wore a dummy patch.
▪ It is hard to break the old habits.
▪ To break the habit, try leaving sugar out of drinks for that magic two weeks.
▪ It provides momentary comfort, but does little to break a troublesome habit or cure a nagging infection.
change
▪ They will have to change old habits and acquire new ones.
▪ They say revolution begins at home, and right now Robert Redford is trying to get you to change your viewing habits.
▪ The difficulty with habits is that they are difficult to change.
▪ They did not change their exercise habits.
▪ This makes the assumption, of course, that the plants have not changed their habits since they were fossilized.
▪ Feedback is critical to changing writing habits.
▪ I like the way it emphasises changing eating habits, along with exercising, too.
▪ He changed his habits eventually and became a college president.
develop
▪ A person may develop bad habits that need correction.
▪ But there is no doubt that young people are developing habits unfavorable to traditional news suppliers.
▪ If you develop good habits they will stand you in good stead in your business and managerial career.
▪ It takes time, not coverage, to develop these habits.
▪ It is also important to develop the habit of checking words in your own writing.
▪ It developed the habit of rushing and pecking the other birds until the woman finally had to kill it.
▪ And over the past few days it had developed an infuriating habit of wandering unerringly back to the subject of Adam Burns.
▪ They develop the important habit of going to school every day.
eat
▪ Also, Pushkin's eating habits suddenly went awry.
▪ I am in control of my eating habits.
▪ I like the way it emphasises changing eating habits, along with exercising, too.
▪ That is like an obese person with unhealthy eating habits deciding against making dietary changes and opting instead for liposuction.
▪ On these I noted taxonomic details, behaviour, eating habits and life cycles.
▪ Besides, your readers' behavior is as unpredictable as their eating habits or love lives.
▪ Especially in the early weeks of the diet, eating habits are very similar to the old ways.
▪ To break the circle, we had to create new habits, confront our emotions and solve eating problems.
fall
▪ The senior ministers fell easily into the habit of cooperation. but many in the party refused even to attempt the transition.
▪ The company had fallen into the habit of using George to administer a sort of organizational shock therapy.
▪ Pip now falls into a snobbish habit of connecting high social status with moral superiority.
▪ A lot of times defenses fall into old habits.
▪ Don't fall into the habit of including the entire contents of the original letter in your reply.
▪ Like individuals, organizations fall into bad habits and ineffectual behaviors more or less by chance.
▪ She fell into the habit of feeding the boys early, and continued it even on nights when he did come home.
▪ It's easy to fall into the habit of small hooks.
form
▪ Amplified vibration can reinforce the normal rhythm of speech and can greatly assist forming the right habits.
▪ Arcas formed a habit of coming out this way on holiday.
▪ She eventually became quite well educated, without forming any bad habits - in spite of herself!
get
▪ As well as food and drink, get into the habit of recording your weight each day.
▪ I got out of the habit in stir.
▪ You get to live a habit.
▪ The problem, in those who hyperventilate, is that they have got into the habit of breathing faster all the time.
▪ In Windows 95, get in the habit of experimenting with it to learn more about what it can do.
▪ If you don't watch out, you can get a worse habit than the one you started with.
▪ I got a habit the size of Manhattan Island and no dealer will touch me.
kick
▪ But knowing is not doing, and many people find it well nigh impossible to kick the habit.
▪ A: Not unless you plan on kicking the movie habit.
▪ Once the motivation to stop arises, it is not so difficult to kick the habit.
▪ Do I have tolerance for a crack addict who does little to kick the habit?
▪ There too a twenty year old who has managed to kick a habit that was leading him down a dangerous path.
▪ After finally getting her to the hospital, the guys resolve to kick the habit.
▪ Wally Reid was actually keen to kick the habit.
▪ Men, however, do not tend to kick the tobacco habit.
learn
▪ Old Wang first learned the habit of reading newspapers closely during the Cultural Revolution and has several cuttings pinned on the wall.
▪ Over time, doubleclick. net Web servers learn your browsing habits and preferences.
▪ More than a few of us got our first work experience and learned positive work habits in this manner.
▪ He had little patience with learning lines, a habit which spread to members of his company.
▪ Most importantly, it shows how an organization accustomed to failure and discord can learn to make a habit of success.
make
▪ Do all men make a habit of dong this?
▪ If you make a habit of reviewing your fading dreams upon awakening, you can memorize quite a collection of nonsense.
▪ I definitely mustn't make a habit of this, or none of my clothes will fit.
▪ The Times, in its imperious fashion, made a habit of sneering at Falls stunters.
▪ Will you make a habit of running your galleys on the rocks, then?
▪ The nutritive arguments still stand and I would not make a habit of eating lots of white bread.
▪ The odd tipple won't make it a bad habit!
▪ Those who do stumble upon the preserve make it a habit to return.
spend
▪ If your financial means vary as much as your spending habits, then such a mortgage may be for you.
▪ First, he had to commit to some very different budgeting and spending habits.
support
▪ He's spent much of his life in prison after turning to crime to support his habit.
▪ Together they shoot up, play soccer, get into barroom brawls, mug tourists and steal to support their habits.
▪ And while I would never steal or sell my first born to support my habit, I had already become a fugitive.
view
▪ Women's viewing habits are different from men's, and older people's viewing habits are different from younger people's.
▪ They say revolution begins at home, and right now Robert Redford is trying to get you to change your viewing habits.
▪ Women's viewing habits are different from men's, and older people's viewing habits are different from younger people's.
▪ Thus autonomy can be viewed as a habit of action that children can begin to develop early on.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a creature of habit
▪ But I was comfortable in it, ever a creature of habit as I told you earlier.
▪ Probably not - I am a creature of habit.
▪ Taurus is a fixed sign, which means you are a creature of habit and are fond of material comforts.
break a habit
▪ I'd once helped her break a habit.
▪ It is important to understand that we are breaking a habit, for we have been conditioned to react in this way.
▪ These three actions are vastly superior to breaking a habit by will-power alone.
by/through/out of force of habit
kick the habit
▪ After nearly 60 years, it's hard to kick the habit.
▪ After finally getting her to the hospital, the guys resolve to kick the habit.
▪ But knowing is not doing, and many people find it well nigh impossible to kick the habit.
▪ Do I have tolerance for a crack addict who does little to kick the habit?
▪ In recent years, more than 11 million smokers in Britain have kicked the habit.
▪ Once the motivation to stop arises, it is not so difficult to kick the habit.
▪ She used treats and kindness rather than nagging to persuade her mum to kick the habit for at least two weeks.
▪ They're members of Wendy Jeffery's tap dancing class, and they just can't kick the habit.
▪ Wally Reid was actually keen to kick the habit.
old habits/traditions/customs die hard
▪ But old habits die hard, and Apple has shown a proclivity to chase market share while hand-wringing over shrinking gross margins.
▪ It was probably unnecessary, she thought, but old habits died hard.
▪ Perhaps because it's an island old customs die hard here.
▪ Things were going well, but old habits die hard.
▪ This is an area where old customs die hard.
support a habit
▪ Paul started dealing drugs to support his own cocaine habit.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Don't start smoking - it's a very bad habit.
▪ He had got into the habit of phoning home during the day.
▪ He has a really annoying habit of leaving his clothes all over the floor.
▪ healthy eating habits
▪ His cocaine habit was ruining his life.
▪ I'm not in the habit of going to bars during the day.
▪ If you have one or two drinks each day, it soon becomes a habit.
▪ Many of them get into petty crime to support their habit.
▪ My father had some rather strange habits, like reading the newspaper in the bath.
▪ Patterns of behaviour develop gradually until they become unconscious habits.
▪ People need to change their eating habits and include more fruit and vegetables in their diet.
▪ Peter had some pretty odd habits.
▪ She was in the habit of taking a walk in the early evening.
▪ Some smokers use chewing gum containing nicotine to help them kick the habit.
▪ You ought to get into the habit of planning your work at the beginning of each week.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ And yet they lacked the most rudimentary academic habits.
▪ But human beings have raised this habit to an art.
▪ Ever since I was a teenager, I have had the bad habit of pulling and twisting my hair.
▪ In recent years, more than 11 million smokers in Britain have kicked the habit.
▪ Septimus is trained out of his bad habits in the end, and everyone sleeps happily ever after.
▪ The habit of moving around in large groups is much commoner in fish than in other kinds of animals.
▪ The game is filled with creatures of habit and superstition.
▪ Today, smoking is really a disruptive habit.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Habit

Habit \Hab"it\ (h[a^]b"[i^]t) n. [OE. habit, abit, F. habit, fr. L. habitus state, appearance, dress, fr. habere to have, be in a condition; prob. akin to E. have. See Have, and cf. Able, Binnacle, Debt, Due, Exhibit, Malady.]

  1. The usual condition or state of a person or thing, either natural or acquired, regarded as something had, possessed, and firmly retained; as, a religious habit; his habit is morose; elms have a spreading habit; esp., physical temperament or constitution; as, a full habit of body.

  2. (Biol.) The general appearance and manner of life of a living organism. Specifically, the tendency of a plant or animal to grow in a certain way; as, the deciduous habit of certain trees.

  3. Fixed or established custom; ordinary course of conduct; practice; usage; hence, prominently, the involuntary tendency or aptitude to perform certain actions which is acquired by their frequent repetition; as, habit is second nature; also, peculiar ways of acting; characteristic forms of behavior.

    A man of very shy, retired habits.
    --W. Irving.

  4. Outward appearance; attire; dress; hence, a garment; esp., a closely fitting garment or dress worn by ladies; as, a riding habit.

    Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy.
    --Shak.

    There are, among the statues, several of Venus, in different habits.
    --Addison.

  5. Hence: The distinctive clothing worn commonly by nuns or monks; as, in the late 1900's many orders of nuns discarded their habits and began to dress as ordinary lay women.

    Syn: Practice; mode; manner; way; custom; fashion.

    Usage: Habit, Custom. Habit is a disposition or tendency leading us to do easily, naturally, and with growing certainty, what we do often; custom is external, being habitual use or the frequent repetition of the same act. The two operate reciprocally on each other. The custom of giving produces a habit of liberality; habits of devotion promote the custom of going to church. Custom also supposes an act of the will, selecting given modes of procedure; habit is a law of our being, a kind of ``second nature'' which grows up within us.

    How use doth breed a habit in a man!
    --Shak.

    He who reigns . . . upheld by old repute, Consent, or custom
    --Milton.

Habit

Habit \Hab"it\ (h[a^]b"[i^]t), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Habited; p. pr. & vb. n. Habiting.] [OE. habiten to dwell, F. habiter, fr. L. habitare to have frequently, to dwell, intens. fr. habere to have. See Habit, n.]

  1. To inhabit. [Obs.]

    In thilke places as they [birds] habiten.
    --Rom. of R.

  2. To dress; to clothe; to array.

    They habited themselves like those rural deities.
    --Dryden.

  3. To accustom; to habituate. [Obs.]
    --Chapman.

Related phrases:
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
habit

early 13c., "characteristic attire of a religious or clerical order," from Old French habit, abit (12c.) "clothing, (ecclesiastical) habit; conduct," from Latin habitus "condition, demeanor, appearance, dress," originally past participle of habere "to have, hold, possess; consider, think, reason; manage, keep," from PIE root *ghabh- "to seize, take, hold, have, give, receive" (cognates: Sanskrit gabhasti- "hand, forearm;" Old Irish gaibim "I take, hold, I have," gabal "act of taking;" Lithuanian gabana "armful," gabenti "to remove;" Gothic gabei "riches;" Old English giefan, Old Norse gefa "to give").\n

\nBase sense probably "to hold," which can be either in offering or in taking. Applied in Latin to both inner and outer states of being, and taken over in both sense by English, though meaning of "dress" is now restricted to monks and nuns. Meaning "customary practice" is early 14c. Drug sense is from 1887.

habit

mid-14c., "to dwell," from Old French habiter "to dwell, inhabit; have dealings with," from Latin habitare "to live, dwell," frequentative of habere "to have, to hold, possess" (see habit (n.)). Meaning "to dress" is from 1580s; "to habituate" from 1610s; "to make a habit of" from 1660s. Related: Habited; habiting.

Wiktionary
habit

Etymology 1 n. An action done on a regular basis. Etymology 2

vb. 1 To clothe. 2 (context archaic English) To inhabit.

Related phrases:
WordNet
habit

  1. n. an established custom; "it was their habit to dine at 7 every evening" [syn: wont]

  2. a pattern of behavior acquired through frequent repetition; "she had a habit twirling the ends of her hair"; "long use had hardened him to it" [syn: use, wont]

  3. (religion) a distinctive attire (as the costume of a religious order)

  4. excessive use of drugs [syn: substance abuse, drug abuse]

habit

v. put a habit on

Related phrases:
Wikipedia
Habit (disambiguation)

A habit is an acquired pattern of behavior that often occurs automatically.

Habit or Habits may also refer to:

Habit (biology)

Habit is equivalent to habitus in some applications in biology; the term refers variously to aspects of behaviour or structure, as follows:

  • In zoology (particularly in ethology), habit usually refers to aspects of more or less predictable behaviour, instinctive or otherwise, though it also has broader application. Habitus refers to the characteristic form or morphology of a species.
  • In botany habit is the characteristic form in which a given species of plant grows.
Habit (1997 film)

Habit is a 1997 vampire horror film starring Larry Fessenden, who also wrote and directed the film. It received rave reviews at the Chicago and Los Angeles International Film Festivals. It is a remake of Fessenden's 1985 film of the same title.

Habit (album)

Habit (also known as 3rd Album) is the third and last studio album by Korean pop singer, U;Nee. It was released on January 26, 2007, on Synnara Music, five days after her death.

Habit

A habit (or wont) is a routine of behavior that is repeated regularly and tends to occur subconsciously .

In the American Journal of Psychology (1903) it is defined in this way: "A habit, from the standpoint of psychology, is a more or less fixed way of thinking, willing, or feeling acquired through previous repetition of a mental experience." Habitual behavior often goes unnoticed in persons exhibiting it, because a person does not need to engage in self-analysis when undertaking routine tasks. Habits are sometimes compulsory. The process by which new behaviours become automatic is habit formation. Old habits are hard to break and new habits are hard to form because the behavioural patterns we repeat are imprinted in our neural pathways, but it is possible to form new habits through repetition.

As behaviors are repeated in a consistent context, there is an incremental increase in the link between the context and the action. This increases the automaticity of the behavior in that context. Features of an automatic behavior are all or some of: efficiency, lack of awareness, unintentionality, uncontrollability.

Habit (1921 film)

Habit is a 1921 American silent drama film directed by Edwin Carewe and written by Madge Tyrone based upon a play by Tom Barry. The film starred Mildred Harris.

HABIT (HabitAbility: Brine, Irradiation and Temperature)

HABIT (HabitAbility, Brine Irradiation and Temperature) is an instrument designed to harvest water from the Mars atmosphere, an experiment that might pave the way to future water farms on Mars. Instrument will be placed onboard ExoMars Surface Science Platform to be launched in 2018.

Related phrases:

Usage examples of "habit".

Gross speaks of a man of thirty who was in the habit of giving exhibitions of sword-swallowing in public houses, and who injured his esophagus to such an extent as to cause abscess and death.

Jacuzzi, absently squeezing the tennis ball he still absently squeezes out of habit.

Fred were in the habit of sexually and sadistically abusing young girls in the cellar of their house for their joint pleasure.

At her house I made the acquaintance of several gamblers, and of three or four frauleins who, without any dread of the Commissaries of Chastity, were devoted to the worship of Venus, and were so kindly disposed that they were not afraid of lowering their nobility by accepting some reward for their kindness--a circumstance which proved to me that the Commissaries were in the habit of troubling only the girls who did not frequent good houses.

I was then in the habit of calling sometimes upon Lucrezia in the morning, and of visiting in the evening Father Georgi, who was acquainted with the excursion to Frascati, and had not expressed any dissatisfaction.

Their attachment also to the ancient royal family had been much weakened by their habits of submission to the Danish princes, and by their late election of Harold or their acquiescence in his usurpation.

Over a century after coca was taxed by the clergy, we still find reports of its satanic influences, and it is just such reports that, blindly cited by later commentators, would help to propagate the myth of coca chewing as a dangerous, addictive habit - a myth that survives to this day.

I have never seen this adventurer without his being in a desperate state of impecuniosity, but he would never learn to abate his luxurious habits, and always managed to find some way or other out of his difficulties.

From the habit of fifty years all this had a physically agitating effect on the old general.

On these same plains of La Plata, we see the agouti and bizcacha, animals having nearly the same habits as our hares and rabbits and belonging to the same order of Rodents, but they plainly display an American type of structure.

Annamaria Roccaro was the last to get into position, smiling in apology as she crowded next to Aiken Drum and felt the hard tools in his pockets pressing through the sleeves and skirts of her habit.

In spite of the odd hours they kept, Alec found it difficult not to break the habit of rising with the sun.

It was more agreeable to watch the clouds while the horses rested at the end of the furrow, to address, as did Burns, lines to a field-mouse, or to listen to the song of the meadow-lark, than to learn the habits of the three dimensions then known, of points in motion, of lines in intersection, of surfaces in revolution, or to represent the unknown by algebraic instead of poetic symbols.

He said that men cured in this way, and enabled to discard the grape system, never afterward got over the habit of talking as if they were dictating to a slow amanuensis, because they always made a pause between each two words while they sucked the substance out of an imaginary grape.

The pheasant, partridge too, I believe, has the habit of feeding on mountain laurel which produces high levels of the poison andromedotoxin in its flesh.