Definition:
The conventional ways in which words or phrases are used, spoken, or written. See also: The Difference Between Grammar and Usage.
Etymology:
From Latin, "to use"Observations:
- "English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment, and education--sometimes it's sheer luck, like getting across a street."
(E. B. White)
- "The present-day scholarly concept of usage as a social consensus based on the practices of the educated middle class has emerged only within the last century. For many people, however, the views and aims of the 17th-18c fixers of the language continue to hold true: they consider that there ought to be a single authority capable of providing authoritative guidance about 'good' and 'bad' usage. For them, the model remains that of the Greek and Latin, and they have welcomed arbiters of usage such as Henry Fowler who have based their prescriptions on this model. In spite of this . . ., no nation in which English is a main language has yet set up an official institution to monitor and make rules about usage. New words, and new senses and uses of words, are not sanctioned or rejected by the authority of any single body: they arise through regular use and, once established, are recorded in dictionaries and grammars. This means that, with the classical model of grammar in rapid decline, the users of English collectively set the standards and priorities that underlie all usage."
(Robert Allen, "Usage," in The Oxford Companion to the English Language, ed. Tom McArthur, Oxford University Press, 1992) - "Usage is trendy, arbitrary, and above all, constantly changing, like all other fashions--in clothing, music, or automobiles. Grammar is the rationale of a language; usage is the etiquette."
(Ian S. Fraser and Lynda M. Hodson, "Twenty-One Kicks at the Grammar Horse," The English Journal, December 1978)
Pronunciation: YOO-sij
