habituation

1. 1.

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

   Synonymsaddictiondependencedependancedependency

   Broaderphysical condition

   Narrowerdrug addiction

   narcotic

2. 2.

   a general accommodation to unchanging environmental conditions

   Broaderadjustment

Other forms of habituation

plural

habituations·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about habituation

What does habituation mean?

habituation means "being abnormally tolerant to and dependent on something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming (especially alcohol or narcotic drugs)". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in habituation?

habituation has 6 syllables: ha-bi-tu-a-ti-on. The stress falls on "ti".

What is another word for habituation?

Close synonyms include addiction, dependence, dependance, dependency. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is habituation a common word?

habituation is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.