Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
- transitive v. To accustom by frequent repetition or prolonged exposure.
- intransitive v. To cause physiological or psychological habituation, as to a drug.
- intransitive v. Psychology To experience habituation.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- v. To turn into a habit, to make habitual.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
- transitive v. To make accustomed; to accustom; to familiarize.
- transitive v. To settle as an inhabitant.
- adj. Firmly established by custom; formed by habit; habitual.
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To accustom; make familiar by habit or customary experience.
- To settle as an inhabitant in a place.
- Synonyms 1. To inure, harden, familiarize (with).
- Inveterate by custom; formed by habit; habitual.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- v. take or consume (regularly or habitually)
- v. make psychologically or physically used (to something)
Etymologies
Examples
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Emotional rewards from novel stimuli are processed by dopamine receptors in the striatum, but the brain is designed to habituate, that is, not get so excited by repeated stimuli.
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Human beings "habituate" to repetitive light-stimuli light flickering light.
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The authors say that the command-and-control approach often used with dogs never works with cats (and will likely spur them to escape their harness and dash off), so it's important to know how to motivate them, how to reassure them when they get nervous, and how to habituate them to the sometimes-scary sounds and sights of the great outdoors.
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And thus, over time, readers habituate to how inherently political is the "Muslims are coming to get us" plot.
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Yes, some teachers and parents reflexively hand out the equivalent of a doggie biscuit every few minutes, the result being that kids habituate to it and it has no impact.
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A deplorable number of recent works habituate us to thinking about Afghanistan as what Liam Fox, Britain's defence secretary, called a "broken 13th-century country", defined solely by pathologically violent men and silently brutalised women.
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But then we habituate to our new possessions, and our happiness level falls back to where it was.
Valerie Tarico: Ivo -- Man With a World Instead of a Country
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Also, you don't habituate to experiences as you do with a new car or phone.
Joe Robinson: The Hidden Key to Happiness: Participant Experiences
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So, I've been going through each song slowly in practice mode trying to habituate myself.
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Hey, everything I read lately tells me inflation is about as alive as the folks who habituate the local cemetery.
oroboros commented on the word habituate
Also used in the sense of inure and sate and cloy in, say, the taste buds in winetasting.
November 18, 2007
slumry commented on the word habituate
to become accustomed to
July 19, 2007