What is "usage"

Usage \Us"age\, n. [F. usage, LL. usaticum. See Use.]

1. The act of using; mode of using or treating; treatment; conduct with respect to a person or a thing; as, good usage; ill usage; hard usage.

   My brother Is prisoner to the bishop here, at whose hands He hath good usage and great liberty.
   --Shak.

2. Manners; conduct; behavior. [Obs.]

   A gentle nymph was found, Hight Astery, excelling all the crew In courteous usage.
   --Spenser.

3. Long-continued practice; customary mode of procedure; custom; habitual use; method.
   --Chaucer.

   It has now been, during many years, the grave and decorous usage of Parliaments to hear, in respectful silence, all expressions, acceptable or unacceptable, which are uttered from the throne.
   --Macaulay.

4. Customary use or employment, as of a word or phrase in a particular sense or signification.

5. Experience. [Obs.]

   In eld [old age] is both wisdom and usage.
   --Chaucer.

   Syn: Custom; use; habit.

   Usage: Usage, Custom. These words, as here compared, agree in expressing the idea of habitual practice; but a custom is not necessarily a usage. A custom may belong to many, or to a single individual. A usage properly belongs to the great body of a people. Hence, we speak of usage, not of custom, as the law of language. Again, a custom is merely that which has been often repeated, so as to have become, in a good degree, established. A usage must be both often repeated and of long standing. Hence, we speak of a ``hew custom,'' but not of a ``new usage.'' Thus, also, the ``customs of society'' is not so strong an expression as the ``usages of society.'' ``Custom, a greater power than nature, seldom fails to make them worship.''
   --Locke. ``Of things once received and confirmed by use, long usage is a law sufficient.''
   --Hooker. In law, the words usage and custom are often used interchangeably, but the word custom also has a technical and restricted sense. See Custom, n., 3.

c.1300, "established practice, custom," from Anglo-French and Old French usage "custom, habit, experience; taxes levied," from us, from Latin usus "use, custom" (see use (v.)). From late 14c. as "service, use, act of using something."

n. 1 The manner or the amount of using; use 2 habit or accepted practice 3 (context lexicography English) The ways and contexts in which spoken and written words are used, determined by a lexicographer's intuition or from corpus analysis. 4 # Correct or proper use of language, proclaimed by some authority. 5 # Geographic, social, or temporal restrictions on the use of words.

1. n. the act of using; "he warned against the use of narcotic drugs"; "skilled in the utilization of computers" [syn: use, utilization, utilisation, employment, exercise]

2. accepted or habitual practice [syn: custom, usance]

Usage is the manner in which written and spoken language is used, the "points of grammar, syntax, style, and the choice of words". and "the way in which a word or phrase is normally and correctly used". Usage can mean the way people actually use language or prescriptively the way one group feels that people ought to use it.

The Chicago Manual of Style says "the great mass of linguistic issues that writers and editors wrestle with don't really concern grammar at all—they concern usage: the collective habits of a language's native speakers", and "the standards of good usage change, however slowly."

Dictionaries are not always accurate guides to "good usage." "Despite occasional usage notes, lexicographers generally disclaim any intent to guide writers and editors on the thorny points of English usage."