usure

present singular third person usures · participle present usuring · participle past usured · past usured

1. intransitiveobsoleteTo commit usury.

   I turn no moneys in the public bank; Nor usure private.

   1605, Ben Johson, Volpone, or The Fox

   3 more examples

   Neither do we approve the policy of the other sections of the bill referred to us, which proposes to declare utterly void all interests by which any usurious or illegal rate of interest is usured or taken, and under which a party may, as has been elsewhere done, tempt a neighbor by an offer of a high rate of interest to loan him money, and then under the cover of this law, turn around and cheat him out of the whole of it.

   1861 January 28, Thos. W. Lockwood, “A bill to regulate the interest on money loaned, and other contracts and liabilities”, in Journal of the Michigan Legislature House of Representatives, page 246

   Similarly, he must make restitution to those from whom he has stolen or robbed before those he has usured.

   2016, Lawrin Armstrong, The Idea of a Moral Economy, page 20

   Before him lay the Groan debtor's prison, a stark gray block against the iron sky. Within its sheer walls were the mad, the indebted, those usured into servitude.

   2017, Michael John Grist, The Saint's Rise

present singular third person usures · participle present usuring · participle past usured · past usured

1. To cause to degenerate through usage.

   The maternal tongue is irrevocably supplanted by a usured tongue, the language of the truck driver and of the maid in Andalusia.

   2006, Stefania Lucamante, Sharon Wood, Under Arturo's Star: The Cultural Legacies of Elsa Morante, page 174

   2 more examples

   Now, however, preaching cannot help anymore. They have usured themselves deaf, blind, and senseless, and they hear, see, and feel nothing more.

   2007, Philip D. Krey, Peter D. S. Krey, Luther's Spirituality, page 42

   This dialectic of "blindness and insight" (and if this insight of Paul de Man has been used up, usured too many times to have kept its luster, what other relation to blindness is concealed in the place of its cliché?) continues to structure our stories that unfold at the site / sight of blindness in the heart of the other's vision: Plato's sighting that of the cave-dwellers,' Derrida's exposing Plato's.

   2011, Zsuzsa Baross, Posthumously: For Jacques Derrida, page 73

plural usures

1. uncountableThe process by which a metaphor inexorably loses its freshness, power, and imagery through overuse.

   In effect there is no access to the usure of a linguistic phenomenon without giving it some figurative representation.

   2012, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Poetics of the Elements in the Human Condition, page 390

   2 more examples

   This movement involves a detour through metaphor: with the expropriation of the primitive meaning given to things, we fall into a metaphoric mode of understanding; in the course of human history and through the process of usure or wearing away of the figurative, and 'proper' meaning is restored; this new one is the old one effaced and carried to a higher conceptual power, now interiorized and spiritualized.

   1993, Irene Rima Makaryk, Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory

   In the exergue of "White Mythology" Derrida tracks the metaphor of the usure from the perspective and tradition of the philosophical metaphor, which is seen to admit the usure as its own process and essence.

   2016, Lisa Foran, Rozemund Uljée, Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida: The Question of Difference, page 167

2. countableAn instance of degredation due to use; A sign of wear and tear.

   The intercostal arteries expand and lead to rib usures.

   2018, Friedrich Paulsen, Tobias M. Böckers, Jens Waschke, Sobotta Anatomy Textbook, page 85

   2 more examples

   If the cartilage is thick, there are fewer usures and less destruction of the bone.

   1961, Acta Rheumatologica Scandinavica - Volume 7, page 151

   Usures develop there which frequently have sclerotic outlines. Usures are also found on the upper surface of the talus, sometimes there are corresponding changes on the articular surface of the tibia.

   1984, Stanislav Popelka, Surgery of Rheumatoid Arthritis, page 176