ABUSED • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Abused

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/əbjˈuzd/ Listen

verb

Abuse v. t. (past & past part. abused; pres. part. abusing)

To put to a wrong use; to misapply; to misuse; to put to a bad use; to use for a wrong purpose or end; to pervert; as, to abuse inherited gold; to make an excessive use of; as, to abuse one's authority. "This principle (if one may so abuse the word) shoots rapidly into popularity."

To use ill; to maltreat; to act injuriously to; to punish or to tax excessively; to hurt; as, to abuse prisoners, to abuse one's powers, one's patience.

To revile; to reproach coarsely; to disparage. "The... tellers of news abused the general."

To dishonor. "Shall flight abuse your name?"

To violate; to ravish.

To deceive; to impose on. (Obs.) "Their eyes red and staring, cozened with a moist cloud, and abused by a double object."

Synonyms: To maltreat; injure; revile; reproach; vilify; vituperate; asperse; traduce; malign.

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Etymology of 'Abused'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Abused" Quotes from Famous Books

... an opportunity to harass the government, he could have found none more to his taste than this question of South American recognition. His enthusiastic and rhetorical temperament rejoiced in such a topic for his luxuriant oratory, and he lauded freedom and abused the administration with a force of expression far from gratifying to the responsible heads of government in their ...

— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse

... the poppet cried, her heartiness going through me like wine. "Are you back? And how you are changed! They must have abused you in Russia. We heard you went to Russia. But since dear Marquis du Plessy died we never hear the ...

— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... man, and he to the third. Thus it passed through the hands of all the ten, delivered from one to another, since none of them could bring himself to destroy its life. So they gave the child back to its mother and went out; and then standing by the doors they abused and found fault with one another, laying blame especially on the one who had first received the child, because he had not done according to that which had been resolved; until at last after some ...

— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus

... was Robert Zimmermann. He constructed his system of Aesthetic out of Herbart, whom he perverted to his own uses, and even employed the much-abused Hegelian dialectic in order to introduce modifications of the beautiful into pure beauty. The beautiful, he said, is a model which possesses greatness, fulness, order, correction, and definite compensation. Beauty appears to us in a characteristic ...

— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce

... of all, they love. This is the love of women: the object of their fond attachment may be misrepresented and abused, the life may seem to be an entire failure; they may themselves be suffering greatly from the results of the beloved one's mistakes and follies—yet will they love still! And so through the gathering ...

— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer

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