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
Since its closure along with the rail works in 1986, it fell into disuse and disrepair.
From BBC ● Aug. 24, 2024
This is why the Spanish, who arrived in the 1500s and set out to control the people by converting them to Catholicism, banned the cultivation and possession of the crop, which fell into disuse.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 25, 2024
Congress did remove that disability from most Confederates in 1872, and the provision fell into disuse.
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 28, 2023
His voice was strange and rusty, as if fallen into disuse.
From "The Secret History" by Donna Tartt
On an adjacent island facing Setouchi are small disused bases that launched shinyo suicide motorboat attacks on Allied forces in World War II.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 3, 2026
Along the disused line from Woljeong-ri towards Baengmagoji station to the south -- the section to be restored under the peace project -- vegetation crowds both sides of the tracks, nearly swallowing a stone wall.
From Barron's ● Aug. 21, 2026
That included disused Ministry of Defence properties because they had on-site facilities and were "more contained," she added.
From BBC ● Aug. 12, 2026
Ries, the bankruptcy trustee, said offices in Texas were disused and decrepit—his foot went through the floor when he visited one location around two months after McClain’s death.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 7, 2026
I’ve done some of what I call my own work as well, although hesitantly: my hands are out of practice, my eyes disused.
From "Cat's Eye" by Margaret Atwood
And finally, it is now near two hundred years since the Society of Quakers denied the authority of the rite altogether, and gave good reasons for disusing it.
From Transcendentalism in New England A History by Octavius Brooks Frothingham
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
Of the asylums entirely disusing restraint, in some of them, as we have stated, the patients have been found tranquil and comfortable, and in others they have been unusually excited and disturbed.
From Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles by Daniel Hack Tuke
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
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
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.
