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:
“I askèd a thief to steal me a peach
He turned up his eyes
I ask’d a lithe lady to lie her down
Holy & meek she cries—
As soon as I went
An angel came.
He wink’d at the thief
And smild at the dame—
And without one word said
Had a peach from the tree
And still as a maid
Enjoy’d the lady.”
—William Blake (1757–1827)
“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)