Definition of "usage"

Habit, practice.

1. A custom or established practice.  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • [S]everal young people sung sacred music in the churchyard at night, which it seems is an usage here.

     1792, James Boswell, in Danziger & Brady (eds.), Boswell: The Great Biographer (Journals 1789–1795), Yale 1989, p. 170

   • Mrs. Wickam, agreeably to the usage of some ladies in her condition, pursued […] the subject, without any compunction.

     1846 October 1 – 1848 April 1, Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1848

2. (uncountable) Custom, tradition.  examples

Utilization.

1. The act of using something; use, employment.  examples

2. The established custom of using language; the ways and contexts in which spoken and written words are used, especially by a certain group of people or in a certain region.  examples

3. (now archaic) Action towards someone; treatment, especially in negative sense.  quotations

   Quotations

   • Whose sharp provokement them incenst so sore, / That both were bent t'avenge his usage base […]

     1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie

   • Satisfy a child by a constant course of your care and kindness, that you perfectly love him, and he may by degrees be accustom'd to bear very painful and rough usage from you, without flinching or complaining

     1693, [John Locke], “§115”, in Some Thoughts Concerning Education, London: […] A[wnsham] and J[ohn] Churchill, […]