usure

See also: ũsuṛë

English

Etymology

Borrowed from French usure.

Verb

usure (third-person singular simple present usures, present participle usuring, simple past and past participle usured)

1. (intransitive, obsolete) To commit usury.
   • 1605, Ben Johson, Volpone, or The Fox:

     I turn no moneys in the public bank; Nor usure private.

   • 1861 January 28, Thos. W. Lockwood, “A bill to regulate the interest on money loaned, and other contracts and liabilities”, in Journal of the Michigan Legislature House of Representatives, page 246:

     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.

   • 2016, Lawrin Armstrong, The Idea of a Moral Economy, page 20:

     Similarly, he must make restitution to those from whom he has stolen or robbed before those he has usured.

   • 2017, Michael John Grist, The Saint's Rise:

     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.

2. To cause to degenerate through usage.
   • 2006, Stefania Lucamante, Sharon Wood, Under Arturo's Star: The Cultural Legacies of Elsa Morante, page 174:

     The maternal tongue is irrevocably supplanted by a usured tongue, the language of the truck driver and of the maid in Andalusia.

   • 2007, Philip D. Krey, Peter D. S. Krey, Luther's Spirituality, page 42:

     Now, however, preaching cannot help anymore. They have usured themselves deaf, blind, and senseless, and they hear, see, and feel nothing more.

   • 2011, Zsuzsa Baross, Posthumously: For Jacques Derrida, page 73:

     This dialectic of "blindness and insight" (and if this insight of Paul de Man has been used up, usured too many times to have kept its luster, what other relation to blindness is concealed in the place of its cliché?) continues to structure our stories that unfold at the site / sight of blindness in the heart of the other's vision: Plato's sighting that of the cave-dwellers,' Derrida's exposing Plato's.

Noun

usure (countable and uncountable, plural usures)

1. (uncountable) The process by which a metaphor inexorably loses its freshness, power, and imagery through overuse.
   • 1993, Irene Rima Makaryk, Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory:

     This movement involves a detour through metaphor: with the expropriation of the primitive meaning given to things, we fall into a metaphoric mode of understanding; in the course of human history and through the process of usure or wearing away of the figurative, and 'proper' meaning is restored; this new one is the old one effaced and carried to a higher conceptual power, now interiorized and spiritualized.

   • 2012, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Poetics of the Elements in the Human Condition, page 390:

     In effect there is no access to the usure of a linguistic phenomenon without giving it some figurative representation.

   • 2016, Lisa Foran, Rozemund Uljée, Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida: The Question of Difference, page 167:

     In the exergue of "White Mythology" Derrida tracks the metaphor of the usure from the perspective and tradition of the philosophical metaphor, which is seen to admit the usure as its own process and essence.

2. (countable) An instance of degredation due to use; A sign of wear and tear.
   • 1961, Acta Rheumatologica Scandinavica - Volume 7, page 151:

     If the cartilage is thick, there are fewer usures and less destruction of the bone.

   • 1984, Stanislav Popelka, Surgery of Rheumatoid Arthritis, page 176:

     Usures develop there which frequently have sclerotic outlines. Usures are also found on the upper surface of the talus, sometimes there are corresponding changes on the articular surface of the tibia.

   • 2018, Friedrich Paulsen, Tobias M. Böckers, Jens Waschke, Sobotta Anatomy Textbook, page 85:

     The intercostal arteries expand and lead to rib usures.

Anagrams

• Eurus, UUers, eurus

French

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /y.zyʁ/
• Rhymes: -yʁ

Etymology 1

From Latin ūsūra.

Noun

usure f (usually uncountable, plural usures)

1. (finance) usury

Related terms

• usuraire
• usurier

Etymology 2

From user +‎ -ure.

Noun

usure f (uncountable)

1. wear and tear, wear

Derived terms

• avoir à l’usure
• guerre d’usure
• usure phonétique

Further reading

• “usure”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Anagrams

• sueur

Italian

Noun

usure f

1. plural of usura

Latin

Participle

ūsūre

1. vocative masculine singular of ūsūrus

Middle English

Alternative forms

• usur, usere, user

Etymology

From Old French usure, from Latin ūsūra.

Noun

usure (plural usures)

1. To lend money in order to make interest; usury.
   • 1387–1400, Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Prioresses Tale”, in The Canterbury Tales, [Westminster: William Caxton, published 1478], →OCLC; republished in [William Thynne], editor, The Workes of Geffray Chaucer Newlye Printed, […], [London]: […] [Richard Grafton for] Iohn Reynes […], 1542, →OCLC:

     foul vsure and lucre of vileynye Hateful to Crist.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

2. Interest on a loan.
3. A loan.

Synonyms

• usurie

Related terms

• usurere

References

• “ūsūre, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-03-31.