The Collaborative International Dictionary
ill-usage \ill-usage\ n. 1. cruel or inhumane treatment.
Syn: maltreatment, ill-treatment, abuse.
Wiktionary
n. bad, cruel or unkind treatment
WordNet
n. cruel or inhumane treatment [syn: maltreatment, ill-treatment, abuse]
Usage examples of "ill-usage".
He had served it lavishly with his fortune during his diplomatic career, and the later story of his captivity and barbarous ill-usage under Guzman Bento was well known to his listeners.
Well then, up and down the solar yer Llewellyn swaggers like a baist and swears his possession and ill-usage of ye.
For some time there had been talk of an operation to be carried out in those uncomfortable waters, partly to diminish the influence of the French, partly to please the Grand Turk, who was at least the nominal ruler of the Arabian shore as far as the Bab el Mandeb and of the Egyptian as far as the dominions of the Negus, and partly to satisfy those English merchants who suffered from the exactions and ill-usage of the Tallal ibn Yahya, who ruled over the small island of Mubara and part of the mainland coast and whose ancestors had levied a toll on all ships that passed within reach and that were neither strong enough to resist nor swift enough to outsail their cumbrous dhows.
There would be infinitely more, if complaint were not the greatest of all provocatives to a repetition and increase of the ill-usage.
It is, that human beings are no longer born to their place in life, and chained down by an inexorable bond to the would be infinitely more, if complaint were not the greatest of all provocatives to a repetition and increase of the ill-usage.