FromOld Frenchdesuser, equivalent todis- +use.
disuse (uncountable)
- The state of not beingused;neglect.
The garden fell intodisuse and became overgrown.
1957 October, William J. Skillern, “The Brynmawr & Western Valleys Railway”, inRailway Magazine, page697:The decline and eventual closing of the various industrial undertakings and the non-renewal of the L.N.W.R. lease led to the railway falling intodisuse, and most of it has now been lifted.
disuse (third-person singular simple presentdisuses,present participledisusing,simple past and past participledisused)
- (transitive) To cease the use of.
1790,Edmond Malone,The Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare[1], London: H. Baldwin, Volume I, p. 194, footnote:Whether in process of time Shakspeare grew weary of the bondage of rhyme, or whether he became convinced of its impropriety in a dramatick dialogue, his neglect of rhyming (for he never whollydisused it) seems to have beengradual.
- 1792,Cruelty the natural and inseparable Consequence of Slavery, preached March 11, 1792, at Hemel-Hempstead, Herts. By John Liddon, inThe Monthly Review, May to August, Volume VIII, p. 238,[2]
- The author does not fail to recommend the practice, adopted, it is said, by many thousands in the kingdom, ofdisusing the West India produce.
- (transitive, archaic) Todisaccustom.
He wasdisused to hard work.
1597,John Donne,The Calm[3], lines39–44:Whether a rotten state, and hope of gaine,
Or todisuse mee from the queasie paine
Of being belov'd, and loving, or the thirst
Of honour, or faire death, out pusht mee first,
I lose my end: for here as well as I
A desperate may live, and a coward die.
