usage

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The act, manner, or amount of using; use: the usage of a technical term; an instrument that measures water usage.
2. n. The act or manner of treating; treatment: subjected the car to rough usage.
3. n. A usual, habitual, or accepted practice. See Synonyms at habit.
4. n. The way in which words or phrases are actually used, spoken, or written in a speech community.
5. n. A particular expression in speech or writing: a nonce usage.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. Use; enjoyment.
2. n. The act of using.
3. n. Mode of using or treating; treatment.
4. n. Long-continued use or practice; customary way of acting; habitual use; custom; practice: as, the ancient usage of Parliament. Technically, in English law, usage has a different signification from custom, in not implying immemorial existence or general prevalence. In earlier times custom was defined as a law created or evidenced by immemorial usage. Some American writers use the terms as practically equivalent, except in regarding usage as the facts by which the existence of custom is proved; others treat usage as the habit of individuals or classes, such as those engaged in a particular trade or business, and custom as the habit of communities or localities.
5. n. Established or customary mode of employing a particular word, phrase, or construction; current locution.
6. n. Manners; behavior; conduct.
7. n. Synonyms Habit, Manner, etc. See custom.

Wiktionary

1. n. The manner or the amount of using; use
2. n. Habit or accepted practice
3. n. lexicography The ways and contexts in which spoken and written words are used, determined by a lexicographer's intuition or from corpus analysis.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The act of using; mode of using or treating; treatment; conduct with respect to a person or a thing.
2. n. obsolete Manners; conduct; behavior.
3. n. Long-continued practice; customary mode of procedure; custom; habitual use; method.
4. n. Customary use or employment, as of a word or phrase in a particular sense or signification.
5. n. obsolete Experience.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. the act of using
2. n. accepted or habitual practice
3. n. the customary manner in which a language (or a form of language) is spoken or written