habituate

English

Etymology

From Middle English habituate (“physically established or present”, adjective), from Latin habituātus , past participle of habituāre (“to bring into a condition or habit of body”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /həˈbɪtju.eɪt/, /həˈbɪt͡ʃu.eɪt/

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Verb

habituate (third-person singular simple present habituates, present participle habituating, simple past and past participle habituated)

1. To make accustomed; to accustom; to familiarize.
   • 1644, Kenelm Digby, Two Treatises, Paris, “The First Treatise declaring the nature and operations of bodies,” Chapter 36, p. 311,^[1]

     […] it was the custome of our English doggs (who were habituated vnto a colder clyme) to runne into the sea in the heate of summer […]

   • 1694, John Tillotson, Sermon 2, in The Works of the Most Reverend Dr. John Tillotson, London: B. Aylmer, 1696, p. 35,^[2]

     Men are usually first corrupted by bad counsel and company […] ; next they habituate themselves to their vicious practices […]

   • 1799, Hannah More, “On the Prevailing System of Education, Manners, and Habits of Women of Rank and Fortune”, in Strictures of the Modern System of Female Education‎^[3], volume 1, London: T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, page 185:

     It seems so very important to ground young persons in the belief that they will not inevitably meet in this world with reward and success according to their merit, but to habituate them to expect even the most virtuous attempts to be often, though not always disappointed, that I am in danger of tautology on this point.

   • 1847, Charlotte Brontë, chapter 7, in Jane Eyre‎^[4]:

     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.

   • 1998, Nadine Gordimer, The House Gun‎^[5], New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, page 50:

     […] quarrels in discotheques were settled by the final curse-word of guns. State violence under the old, past regime had habituated its victims to it. People had forgotten there was any other way.

2. (obsolete) To settle as an inhabitant.
   • 1690, William Temple, “Of Poetry”, in Miscellanea. The Second Part in Four Essays‎^[6], London: Ri. and Ra. Simpson, page 312:

     After the Conquests made by Caesar upon Gaul, and the nearer Parts of Germany […] great Numbers of Germans and Gauls resorted to the Roman Armies and to the City it self, and habituated themselves there, as many Spaniards, Syrians, Graecians had done before upon the Conquest of those Countries.

Synonyms

• accustom
• inure

Related terms

• habit
• habitual
• habituation

Translations

to accustom; to familiarize.

• Bulgarian: свиквам (bg) (svikvam)
• Ingrian: aatuttaa

Spanish

Verb

habituate

1. second-person singular voseo imperative of habituar combined with te