usure
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
5
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
To cause to degenerate through usage.
Example Sentences
- "I turn no moneys in the public bank; Nor usure private."
- "Neither do we approve the policy of the other sections of the bill referred to us, which proposes to declare utterly void all interests by which any usurious or illegal rate of interest is usured or taken, and under which a party may, as has been elsewhere done, tempt a neighbor by an offer of a high rate of interest to loan him money, and then under the cover of this law, turn around and cheat him out of the whole of it."
- "Similarly, he must make restitution to those from whom he has stolen or robbed before those he has usured."
- "Before him lay the Groan debtor's prison, a stark gray block against the iron sky. Within its sheer walls were the mad, the indebted, those usured into servitude."
- "The maternal tongue is irrevocably supplanted by a usured tongue, the language of the truck driver and of the maid in Andalusia."
- "Now, however, preaching cannot help anymore. They have usured themselves deaf, blind, and senseless, and they hear, see, and feel nothing more."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₃eyt-der.? Proto-Italic *oitōr Latin ūtor Proto-Indo-European *-tew-? Proto-Indo-European *-r-eh₂? Latin -tūra Latin ūsūra French usurebor. English usure Borrowed from French usure (“usury”, noun). The change to a verb in English may be influenced by back-formation from usury. Piecewise doublet of etymology 2.