Word usage is how a word, phrase, or concept is used in a language. Lexicographers gather samples of written or spoken instances where a word is used and analyze them to determine patterns of regional or social usage as well as meaning. A word, for example the English word "donny" (a round rock about the size of a man's head), may be only a rare regional usage, or a word may be used worldwide by all English speakers and have one or several evolving definitions, such as the word "hacker".
Word usage may also involve grammar and thus be the subject of profound analysis.
See the following pages for some examples of word usages:
- Who (pronoun)
- Than
- While
- Gender-neutral pronoun
Famous quotes containing the words word and/or usage:
“Man, even man debased by the neocapitalism and pseudosocialism of our time, is a marvelous being because he sometimes speaks. Language is the mark, the sign, not of his fall but of his original innocence. Through the Word we may regain the lost kingdom and recover powers we possessed in the far-distant past.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)
“Pythagoras, Locke, Socrates—but pages
Might be filled up, as vainly as before,
With the sad usage of all sorts of sages,
Who in his life-time, each was deemed a bore!
The loftiest minds outrun their tardy ages.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)