Other forms: used, using, uses
To use something is to take it and do a job with it. A knife to cut bread, a phone to ring your mother, a stick to poke a ball out of a hedge.
Use is a noun as well, and the sound changes between them: the verb ends in a z, the noun ends in an s. 'I use it every day' but 'it has its uses'. The family is large — useful, useless, user, usage — and 'used to' is two different things that trip everyone. 'I used to smoke' means it happened for a while in the past and then stopped, and it takes a bare verb after it. 'I am used to the noise' means I have grown accustomed to it, and it takes -ing. There is also the ugly sense: to use a person is to treat them as a tool. And use up means finish the whole supply — we used up the last of the milk.
1verbuseTo do something with an object, a method or a skill in order to get a result.~49%
“She used a spoon to scrape the last of the jam out of the jar.”
synonyms: employ
2verbconsumeTo consume a supply of something in the course of working or living.~11%
“The old boiler uses far more gas than the new one.”
3verbtreatTo treat a person as a means to your own ends.~2%
“He felt she had used him and moved on without a word.”
4nounactThe act of using something, or the purpose it serves.~33%
“The building has been out of use since the flood.”
5nounrightThe right or opportunity to use something that belongs to someone else.~5%
“She gave me the use of her car for the weekend.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 19 sentences found in the wild and placed 18 of them on a sense (1 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Use came from Latin ūsus — 'use, custom, skill, habit' — through Old French us. English already had words for this: note, from Old English notu, and nutte from nytt. The French import pushed both aside, and note wandered off to mean something else entirely.
Old French
us
Middle English
use
English, today
use
Built from
From Middle English use, from Old French us. Middle English use, from Old French us, from Latin ūsus (“use, custom, skill, habit”), from past participle stem of ūtor (“use”). Displaced native Middle English note (“use”) (see note) from Old English notu; Middle English nutte (“use”) from Old English nytt; as well as Old English fricu and Old English sidu.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA