use

1. 1.

   put into service; make work or employ for a particular purpose or for its inherent or natural purpose

   “use your head!”

   “we only use Spanish at home”

   “I can't use this tool”

   “Apply a magnetic field here”

   “This thinking was applied to many projects”

   “How do you utilize this tool?”

   “I apply this rule to get good results”

   “use the plastic bags to store the food”

   “He doesn't know how to use a computer”

   Synonymsutilizeutiliseapplyemploy

   Narrowergiveplaypull out all the stopsputplyaddresswastemisapplyavailoveruse
2. 2.

   take or consume (regularly or habitually)

   “She uses drugs rarely”

   Synonymshabituate

   Broaderconsume

   Narrowersmokedrug
3. 3.

   use up, consume fully

   “The legislature expended its time on school questions”

   Synonymsexpend

   Narrowerpervertabusesparetakewaste
4. 4.

   seek or achieve an end by using to one's advantage

   “She uses her influential friends to get jobs”

   “The president's wife used her good connections”

   Broaderexploit

   Narrowertrespass
5. 5.

   avail oneself to

   “apply a principle”

   “practice a religion”

   “use care when going down the stairs”

   “use your common sense”

   “practice non-violent resistance”

   Synonymspracticeapply

   Narrowerfollow
6. 6.

   habitually do something or be in a certan state or place (use only in the past tense)

   “She used to call her mother every week but now she calls only occasionally”

   “I used to get sick when I ate in that dining hall”

   “They used to vacation in the Bahamas”

   “she used to be his best friend and now they are enemies”

   Broaderact

Other forms of use

plural

uses·

past tense

used·

present participle

using·

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 use

What does use mean?

use means "the act of using". That is the primary sense; the word has 13 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in use?

use has 1 syllable: use. In IPA it is /ˈjus/.

What is another word for use?

Close synonyms include usage, utilization, utilisation, employment, exercise. 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 use a common word?

use is banded "Core" — among the few thousand words that carry most english. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.

What rhymes with use?

2 words rhyme with use. Rhymes are matched on the phonemes from the last stressed vowel onward, which is the definition a reader has in their head.