Usual is the word for how things go when nothing special is happening: the same bus, the same seat, the same coffee. Your usual table, the usual Monday meeting, the usual crowd in the pub.
It sits in front of the noun almost every time, as in the usual suspects, her usual route, the usual way of doing things. Learn as usual whole, because he was late, as usual is right and as usually is wrong. In a cafe or a bar, the usual on its own means the thing you always order and the staff already know it. Business as usual means everything is carrying on in spite of the trouble. The adverb usually goes with the verb, as in I usually walk, while unusual is the opposite and carries a small note of surprise.
1adjectiveusualHappening or done most of the time; the same as before.~98%
“He took his usual seat by the window.”
2nounordersIn informal English, the thing a person always orders or has.~2%
“She nodded at the barman and he poured her the usual.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 22 sentences found in the wild and placed 22 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Usual comes from Latin usualis, fit for use and so ordinary, built on usus, use or habit, from utor, to use. It arrived through Old French usuel and displaced the native English gewunelic. What is usual is what gets used, the habit worn smooth by repetition.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₃eyt- — to take along, fetch
Latin
ūsuālis — for use, fit for use, also of common use, customary, common, ordinary, usual
Old French
usuel
Middle English
usual
English, today
usual
Built from
From Middle English usual, from Old French usuel, from Latin ūsuālis (“for use, fit for use, also of common use, customary, common, ordinary, usual”), from ūsus (“use, habit, custom”), from the past participle stem of utor (“to use”), possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European h₃eyt- (“to take along, fetch”). Displaced native ġewunelīċ.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA