Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The length of time, established by custom and varying between countries, that is allowed for payment of a foreign bill of exchange.
- n. Use.
- n. Usage; custom.
- n. Interest paid on borrowed money.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Using; use; employment.
- n. Usage; custom.
- n. Premium paid for the use of money loaned; interest.
- n. The time which is allowed by custom or usage for the payment of bills of exchange drawn on a distant country. The length of the usance varies in different places from fourteen days to six months after the date of the bill, and the bill may be drawn at usance, half usance, double usance, etc. In recent years a four months' usance has been established for India, China, Japan, etc.
Wiktionary
- n. The length of time permitted for the payment of a bill of exchange.
- n. Use.
- n. Customary or habitual usage.
- n. The interest payed on a borrowed sum, usury.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. obsolete Use; usage; employment.
- n. obsolete Custom; practice; usage.
- n. obsolete Interest paid for money; usury.
- n. (Com.) The time, fixed variously by the usage between different countries, when a bill of exchange is payable.
WordNet 3.0
- n. accepted or habitual practice
- n. (economics) the utilization of economic goods to satisfy needs or in manufacturing
- n. the period of time permitted by commercial usage for the payment of a bill of exchange (especially a foreign bill of exchange)
Etymologies
- Middle English, usage, from Old French, probably from Vulgar Latin *ūsantia, from *ūsāns, *ūsant-, present participle of *ūsāre, frequentative of Latin ūtī. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Everything in it, tolerable or intolerable, will have but one use; and that use what our ancestors used to call usance or usury.”
“This double usance from London to Paris through Amsterdam gives four months—and we pay here to Robert Morris the value of the livres payable in Paris on the day when the bills are payable by you in London respectively, this gives at least seven months.”
“ Yet this bounty the while, these gifts ancestral of usance”
“So God me help, said Palomides, this is a shameful custom, and a villainous usance for a queen to use, and namely to make such war upon her own lord, that is called the”
“The busy and sagacious bees fixed their republic in the clefts of the rocks and hollows of the trees, offering without usance the plenteous produce of their fragrant toil to every hand.”
“Yet this bounty the while, these gifts ancestral of usance”
“When the steed recovered, bold Siegfried took on a frightful usance in the fray.”
“That bread cast upon the waters — "'dough' put out at usance," as Joseph Jefferson used to phrase it — shall return after many days has been I dare say discovered by most persons who have perpetrated acts of kindness, conscious or unconscious.”
“Of usance for my moneys, and youll not hear me: 124”
“When the Church decreed that the taking of interest for money was sin, and great theologians published in Venice some of their mightiest treatises demonstrating this view from Holy Scripture and the Fathers, the Venetians continued borrowing and lending money on usance.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘usance’.
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Interesting words
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phrontistery-u
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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nachchba's Words
stentorian, blasé, ennui, concinnity, melee, photokeratitis, skiffle, refulgence, mongrel, fakir, caid, eudaimonia and 215 more...
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work these into conversation
Challenge!
legerdemain, polysemic, rupestrian, callipygian, oscitancy, numen, lucubration, asperity, amalgam, apposite, wastrel, eleemosynary and 208 more...
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