assuetude

plural assuetudes

1. archaiccountableuncountableAccustomedness; habit.

   Assuetude of things hurtful doth make them lose their force to hurt.

   1627 (indicated as 1626), Francis [Bacon], “(please specify the page, or |century=I to X)”, in Sylua Syluarum: Or A Naturall Historie. In Ten Centuries. […], London: […] William Rawley […]; [p]rinted by J[ohn] H[aviland] for William Lee […], →OCLC

2. countableuncountableThe condition of an organism that has acquired tolerance of a drug or poison.

   The boy had been his companion for years: and from assuetude had become, as it were, a part of himself.

   1836, Frederick Marryat, The Pirate, Chapter VII

   1 more example

   My flesh writhed like the glutinous flesh of a serpent. Slowly moved, and stopped: -- then was a sweep -- and a swirl -- and a pause! then a swirl -- and a sweep -- and a pause! -- then steady industry of labour on the monstrous brazen axis, as the husbandman plods by the plough; then increase of zest, assuetude of a fledgeling to the wing -- then intensity -- then the last light ecstasy of flight.

   1896, Matthew Phipps Shiel, Vaila