Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. Chiefly British Variant of practice.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To put into action or practice; execute; perform; enact.
- To do or perform frequently or habitually; make a practice of; observe or follow usually: as, to practise the Christian virtues; to practise deception.
- To make use of; frequent.
- To exercise or pursue as a profession, art, or occupation: as, to practise law.
- To exercise one's self in, with the object of acquiring skill or experience; study or learn by repeated performance: as, to practise a piece of music.
- To cause to practise; teach by practice or exercise; train; drill.
- To scheme; plot; contrive craftily or treacherously.
- To influence; entice; tamper with; bribe.
- To make; construct; build.
- To perform certain acts repeatedly or usually; exercise, train, or drill one's self: as, to practise upon the piano; to practise with the rifle.
- To form a habit of action; act or do habitually; hence, to behave; conduct one's self.
- To exercise a profession; follow a vocation.
- To experiment.
- To negotiate secretly; have a secret understanding.
- To use schemes or stratagems; conspire; plot.
Wiktionary
- v. transitive, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland To repeat as a way of improving one's skill in that activity.
- v. intransitive, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland To repeat an activity in this way.
- v. transitive, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland To perform or observe in a habitual fashion.
- v. transitive, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland To pursue (a career, especially law, fine art or medicine).
- v. intransitive, obsolete, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland To conspire.
- v. alternative spelling of practice (verb).
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. See practice.
WordNet 3.0
- v. carry out or practice; as of jobs and professions
- v. learn by repetition
- v. engage in a rehearsal (of)
Etymologies
- From Middle English practizen, a variant of practisen, from Middle French pratiser, practiser, from Medieval Latin practizo, from Late Latin practico ("to do, perform, execute, propose, practise, exercise, be conversant with, contrive, conspire, etc."), from prāctica ("practical affairs", "business"), from Ancient Greek πρακτική (prāktikē), from πρακτικός (praktikós, "practical"), from πράσσειν (prassein, "to do") (Wiktionary)
Examples
“The first efforts may be very lame, but if you want speed on a typewriter, a record for a hundred-yard dash, or facility in speaking, you must practise, _practise_, _PRACTISE_.”
“But they cannot be mastered and applied by thinking or reading about them -- you must practise, _practise_, _PRACTISE_.”
“This practise is almost absent now - my father who can be a little hard of hearing, is unable to follow Hindi movies produced today, but can still understand the older movies broadcast on TV.”
“People at the bottom end of the legal job market seem in practise to drop out of lawyering.”
Matthew Yglesias » Too Many Lawyers, But Also Too Many Cartels
“I believe usual practise is to assume that if you got a nice early slide this time because of BST, you might get a kick in the rear end later in the year from the return to GMT; your twelve hour night shift magically morphing into a 13hr slog.”
“I suspect it is a senior officer having yet another example of ‘diversity in practise’ for the next promotion board! on January 14, 2010 at 2: 30 pm refurbished laptops as a short fella myself, I know this guy is going to face grief over his height, but it seems he has the right attitude.”
“For example sometimes Scott puts his e-mail address like this: ‘myextralife at gmail dot com’, best practise is to put you e-mail in a picture where the bots cant harvest them easily or hide the e-mail behind a CAPTCHA.”
EXTRALIFE – By Scott Johnson - Sometimes this site gets crazy spam
“My example of the "walking" was one such attempt: I didn't say it was likely that such would happen in practise (it is not), but rather that, legally it wouldn't make sense to assume the literal right to assemble without the incorporation of some panoply (or "penumbra") of associated rights that, while not explicit, in their absense would gut or make a mockery of the one right explicitly given.”
“In some instances, they'd marry the local doctor and support him in practise well able to focus her primary attention upon the family - sons and dauhters following in the family tradition, building up the family dynasty as it were. (not the gigantic supermarket medical centres of today).”
“It is remarkable that mankind, and turtles, and pigeons alone practise kissing; hence the Latin word”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘practise’.
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EN - confusables
Similar words meaning different things
torturous, wreathe, tortuous, wreath, titivate, titillate, stationary, storey, septic, principal, principle, story and 134 more...
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UK Usage - Find US Equivalent
All these terms have a (different) American English equivalent. Wonder if you can identify them?
abridgement (abri..., accoutrement, accoutre, acknowledgement (..., opposite, advert, adaptor, adapter, sticking plaster, advertise, adviser (advisor ..., adze, aesthete and 1196 more...
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queintise pectise quantise
demephitising (purifying the air) about practise
lemmatise, infinitise, decatise, cotise, cottise, bêtise, practise, queintise, demephitise, dolomitise, agatise, quaintise and 40 more...
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elvesoncrack's Words
lachrymose, blustering, fjord, chihuahua, chiffon, catalytic, stile, gefilte, prosh, thwart, ralph, ickle and 379 more...
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my dictionary
able, abnormally, abroad, absent, abstract, acceptable, acceptance, access, accessible, accession, according to, account and 4551 more...
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Words of the Day
glabella, chirotony, nook-shotten, crapehanger, filemot, swirlie, egosurf, lexiphanicism, Ruritanian, stichometry, chrononaut, faldstool and 2008 more...
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c.ylv
sorcery, whitcraft, obscure, semantic, fortuitous, trickery, deception, doubt, reborrowing, practise, hence, sorcerer and 4 more...
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for which I postfer the American spel...
catalogue, doughnut, practise, labour, favourite, colour, theatre, behaviour, neighbour, dialogue, mediæval, encyclopædia and 4 more...
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chiefly british
windlestraw, boffin, poppet, bloody, motorway, telly, git, tyre, windscreen, zebra crossing, panda car, lorry and 61 more...
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to avoid using "implement" as a verb
enact, effect, reify, project, practise, put, actualise, embody, instantiate
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words that I've yet to master
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to avoid "work"ing
function, succeed, job, perform, act, feat, practice, practise, do
Tweets
Looking for tweets for practise.
bilby Not that I can detect. Jun 8, 2011
rolig It's like advise and advice, only there is no difference in pronunciation. Or is there, Frindley? Jun 8, 2011
ruzuzu Whoa. That's an interesting distinction. Jun 8, 2011
trivet That's just wrong. Mar 31, 2008
frindley An instance where something is lost in the American spelling system.
I do like that I can make a distinction between practice (noun) and practise (verb). And the trick I learned as a kid was that the noun form ended with a noun (ice!). Mar 31, 2008