disuse

1. uncountableThe state of not being used; neglect.

   The garden fell into disuse and became overgrown.

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   The decline and eventual closing of the various industrial undertakings and the non-renewal of the L.N.W.R. lease led to the railway falling into disuse, and most of it has now been lifted.

   1957 October 28, William J. Skillern, “The Brynmawr & Western Valleys Railway”, in Railway Magazine, page 697

   Synonyms: desuetude, obsoleteness, unuse, desuetude, disusage, inusitation, obsolescence, obsoleteness

present singular third person disuses · participle present disusing · participle past disused · past disused

1. transitiveTo cease the use of.

   Whether in process of time Shakspeare grew weary of the bondage of rhyme, or whether he became convinced of its impropriety in a dramatick dialogue, his neglect of rhyming (for he never wholly disused it) seems to have been gradual.

   1790, Edmond Malone, The Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare, London: H. Baldwin, Volume I, p. 194, footnote

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   1792, Cruelty the natural and inseparable Consequence of Slavery, preached March 11, 1792, at Hemel-Hempstead, Herts. By John Liddon, in The Monthly Review, May to August, Volume VIII, p. 238, https://books.google.ca/books?id=TKvkAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false The author does not fail to recommend the practice, adopted, it is said, by many thousands in the kingdom, of disusing the West India produce.

2. archaictransitiveTo disaccustom.

   He was disused to hard work.

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   Whether a rotten state, and hope of gaine, Or to disuse mee from the queasie paine Of being belov'd, and loving, or the thirst Of honour, or faire death, out pusht mee first, I lose my end: for here as well as I A desperate may live, and a coward die.

   1597, John Donne, The Calm, lines 39–44