disuse
Americannoun
verb (used with object)
noun
Etymology
Origin of disuse
Explanation
Use the noun disuse to describe a condition of not being used. After years of disuse, you won't be surprised when your dad's motorcycle doesn't start. The word disuse implies at least a bit of neglect, and it can also mean that something has become obsolete or old-fashioned: "Typewriters fell into disuse after personal computers became available." You'll often find the word used in the graceful phrase "fall into disuse." The word comes from a Latin root, dis, which means "lack of," added to the word use, and it's been around since about 1400.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
After a brief resurgence during the Civil War, when it was used as a military route, the road fell into disuse.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 24, 2026
The church fell into disuse in the 1950s and was converted into a house in the early 2000s.
From BBC ● Apr. 24, 2024
The body’s sensors that on Earth raise our blood pressure when we stand up from lying down, so that we don’t faint, grow lazy with disuse.
From New York Times ● Nov. 12, 2023
The groups requested that a judge prohibit various local government agencies from approving projects on such lands, noting that they should instead be built on roofs, parking lots, landfills in disuse and previously contaminated grounds.
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 14, 2023
His voice was strange and rusty, as if fallen into disuse.
From "The Secret History" by Donna Tartt
That included disused Ministry of Defence properties because they had on-site facilities and were "more contained," she added.
From BBC ● Aug. 12, 2026
AFP on Saturday saw migrant minors milling around in a disused industrial park in Ceuta, while others dozed on the pavements outside.
From Barron's ● Aug. 2, 2026
In dirty t-shirts and flimsy sandals, hundreds of unaccompanied minors slept outdoors in a disused industrial park in Ceuta after swimming to the Spanish territory from Morocco, AFP saw Saturday.
From Barron's ● Aug. 1, 2026
The long-vacant site has become a magnet for so-called urban explorers, who prowl abandoned malls, hospitals, power plants, amusement parks, factories and any other disused structure they can breach.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 7, 2026
Here they hesitated before a disused logging trail that led westward from the side of the road, its entrance almost concealed by overhanging branches.
From "The Incredible Journey" by Sheila Burnford
The practice still continued in England of disusing tillage and throwing the land into enclosures, for the sake of pasture.
From The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. From Elizabeth to James I. by David Hume
But no mere sentimental or capricious dislike to the pig, on the part of any number of persons, could now procure an enactment for disusing that animal.
From Moral Science; a Compendium of Ethics by Alexander Bain
Oh the general shamefulness of disusing the feet God had given me.
From The Quality of Mercy by William Dean Howells
What a hushing of voices and cleansing of wits and disusing of oaths was there after my little lady came to our rough Habitation!
From Heralds of Empire Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade by Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
From an internal desire on the part of the creature disusing it, to be quit of an organ which it finds troublesome.
From Life and Habit by R. A. (Richard Alexander) Streatfeild
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
