Library / English Dictionary |
USUAL
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Occurring or encountered or experienced or observed frequently or in accordance with regular practice or procedure
Example:
the child's usual bedtime
Classified under:
Similar:
accustomed; customary; habitual; wonted (commonly used or practiced; usual)
chronic; inveterate (habitual)
regular (in accord with regular practice or procedure)
Also:
common (having no special distinction or quality; widely known or commonly encountered; average or ordinary or usual)
Attribute:
usualness (commonness by virtue of not being unusual)
Antonym:
unusual (not usual or common or ordinary)
Derivation:
usualness (commonness by virtue of not being unusual)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Example:
the usual greeting
Synonyms:
common; usual
Classified under:
Similar:
familiar (within normal everyday experience; common and ordinary; not strange)
Derivation:
usualness (commonness by virtue of not being unusual)
Context examples:
Painless swelling is the usual clinical sign.
(Childhood Parosteal Osteosarcoma, NCI Thesaurus)
Stable angina is the most common type. It happens when the heart is working harder than usual.
(Angina, NIH: National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute)
It may also describe treatment that is more severe or intense than usual.
(Aggressive, NCI Dictionary)
During this time they are much visited by their friends, because they cannot go abroad with their usual ease and satisfaction.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
It struck me that he was looking even paler and thinner than usual.
(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
The usual fire was necessary to save them.
(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)
Called at the Berkeley and found Van Helsing, as usual, up to time.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
The usual character of them has nothing for me.
(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)
He did not insist, which I rather feared he would have done; he allowed me to return quietly to my usual seat.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
Peggotty's answer soon arrived, and was, as usual, full of affectionate devotion.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)