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From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Usage \Us"age\, noun [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}, noun, 3.
From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
usage
noun
1: 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}]
From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:
155 Moby Thesaurus words for "usage": acceptance, acceptation, acception, active use, adjectival phrase, antonym, appliance, application, articulation, automatism, bad habit, bon ton, care, ceremony, characteristic, choice, choice of words, clause, composition, conformity, construction, consuetude, consumption, convenance, convention, creature of habit, custodianship, custom, dialect, diction, employ, employment, established way, etiquette, exercise, exertion, expression, fashion, folkway, force of habit, form, formality, formulation, free form, good use, grammar, guidance, guiding, habit, habit pattern, habitude, handling, hard usage, hard use, headed group, homograph, homonym, homophone, idiom, idiotism, ill use, language, langue, lead, lexeme, lingo, lingua, linguistic form, locution, logos, management, manipulation, manner, manner of speaking, manners, means of dealing, metonym, minimum free form, misuse, monosyllable, mores, noun phrase, observance, operation, paragraph, parlance, parole, pattern, peculiar expression, peculiarity, period, personal usage, phrasal idiom, phrase, phraseology, phrasing, polysyllable, practice, praxis, preference, prescription, procedure, proceeding, process, proper thing, received meaning, rhetoric, ritual, rough usage, routine, second nature, sentence, set phrase, social convention, speech, standard behavior, standard phrase, standard usage, standing custom, stereotype, stereotyped behavior, stewardship, syllable, synonym, syntactic structure, talk, term, time-honored practice, tongue, tradition, treatment, trick, turn of expression, turn of phrase, use, use of words, using up, usus loquendi, utterance, verb complex, verb phrase, verbalism, verbiage, verbum, vocable, way, way of speaking, what is done, wont, wonting, word, word-group, wordage, wording, wrong use
From THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY ((C)1911 Released April 15 1993) [devils]:
USAGE, noun The First Person of the literary Trinity, the Second and Third being Custom and Conventionality. Imbued with a decent reverence for this Holy Triad an industrious writer may hope to produce books that will live as long as the fashion.
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