HABITUATE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does habituate mean? 

• HABITUATE (verb)
  The verb HABITUATE has 2 senses:

1. take or consume (regularly or habitually)

2. make psychologically or physically used (to something)

  Familiarity information: HABITUATE used as a verb is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• HABITUATE (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they habituate    ... he / she / it habituates   
Past simple: habituated   
Past participle: habituated   
-ing form: habituating   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Take or consume (regularly or habitually)

Classified under:

Verbs of eating and drinking

Synonyms:

habituate; use

Context example:

She uses drugs rarely

Hypernyms (to "habituate" is one way to...):

consume; have; ingest; take; take in (serve oneself to, or consume regularly)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "habituate"):

smoke (inhale and exhale smoke from cigarettes, cigars, pipes)

do drugs; drug (use recreational drugs)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s something

Derivation:

habit ((psychology) an automatic pattern of behavior in reaction to a specific situation; may be inherited or acquired through frequent repetition)

habit (an established custom)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Make psychologically or physically used (to something)

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Synonyms:

accustom; habituate

Context example:

She became habituated to the background music

Hypernyms (to "habituate" is one way to...):

alter; change; modify (cause to change; make different; cause a transformation)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "habituate"):

harden; indurate; inure (cause to accept or become hardened to; habituate)

teach (accustom gradually to some action or attitude)

addict; hook (to cause (someone or oneself) to become dependent (on something, especially a narcotic drug))

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s somebody PP

Derivation:

habit (excessive use of drugs)

habituation (a general accommodation to unchanging environmental conditions)

habituation (being abnormally tolerant to and dependent on something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming (especially alcohol or narcotic drugs))

 Context examples 

I just put my two arms round her and said, "Come, Bessie! don't scold." The action was more frank and fearless than any I was habituated to indulge in: somehow it pleased her.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

To the theatre accordingly they all went; no Tilneys appeared to plague or please her; she feared that, amongst the many perfections of the family, a fondness for plays was not to be ranked; but perhaps it was because they were habituated to the finer performances of the London stage, which she knew, on Isabella's authority, rendered everything else of the kind quite horrid.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

Having thus answered the only objection that can ever be raised against me as a traveller, I here take a final leave of all my courteous readers, and return to enjoy my own speculations in my little garden at Redriff; to apply those excellent lessons of virtue which I learned among the Houyhnhnms; to instruct the Yahoos of my own family, is far as I shall find them docible animals; to behold my figure often in a glass, and thus, if possible, habituate myself by time to tolerate the sight of a human creature; to lament the brutality to Houyhnhnms in my own country, but always treat their persons with respect, for the sake of my noble master, his family, his friends, and the whole Houyhnhnm race, whom these of ours have the honour to resemble in all their lineaments, however their intellectuals came to degenerate.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

My first quarter at Lowood seemed an age; and not the golden age either; it comprised an irksome struggle with difficulties in habituating myself to new rules and unwonted tasks.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

He observed, that among the diversions of our nobility and gentry, I had mentioned gaming: he desired to know at what age this entertainment was usually taken up, and when it was laid down; how much of their time it employed; whether it ever went so high as to affect their fortunes; whether mean, vicious people, by their dexterity in that art, might not arrive at great riches, and sometimes keep our very nobles in dependence, as well as habituate them to vile companions, wholly take them from the improvement of their minds, and force them, by the losses they received, to learn and practise that infamous dexterity upon others?

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)