Definition of Abuse

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Definition of Abuse

Abuse

To put to a wrong use; to misapply; to misuse; to put to a bad use; to use for a wrong purpose or end; to pervert; as, to abuse inherited gold; to make an excessive use of; as, to abuse one's authority.

To use ill; to maltreat; to act injuriously to; to punish or to tax excessively; to hurt; as, to abuse prisoners, to abuse one's powers, one's patience.

To revile; to reproach coarsely; to disparage.

To dishonor.

To violate; to ravish.

To deceive; to impose on.

Improper treatment or use; application to a wrong or bad purpose; misuse; as, an abuse of our natural powers; an abuse of civil rights, or of privileges or advantages; an abuse of language.

Physical ill treatment; injury.

A corrupt practice or custom; offense; crime; fault; as, the abuses in the civil service.

Vituperative words; coarse, insulting speech; abusive language; virulent condemnation; reviling.

Violation; rape; as, abuse of a female child.

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Abuse Quotations

Let us not forget who we are. Drug abuse is a repudiation of everything America is.
Ronald Reagan

We should meet abuse by forbearance. Human nature is so constituted that if we take absolutely no notice of anger or abuse, the person indulging in it will soon weary of it and stop.
Mohandas Gandhi

It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon the supposition he may abuse it.
George Washington

Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts.
Ernest Hemingway

Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.
John Adams

Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.
Voltaire

Let's suppose somebody abused you sexually. You still had a choice, though not a good one, about what to tell yourself about the abuse.
Albert Ellis

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.
James Madison

Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.
James Madison

When you have no basis for an argument, abuse the plaintiff.
Marcus Tullius Cicero

Abuse Translations

abuse in Dutch is gescheld
abuse in Finnish is kiduttaa
abuse in Italian is abuso
abuse in Norwegian is misbruke, misbruk, skjelle ut
abuse in Portuguese is abuso
abuse in Spanish is abuso, usufructo, insulto

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