Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Done by habit.
  • adjective Being so by habit: synonym: chronic.
  • adjective Established by long use; usual: synonym: usual.
  • adjective Grammar Designating an action or state that lasts for or is repeated over an extended duration, expressed in English by such means as the simple present tense (She works downtown) and the phrase used to (A factory used to be located at that intersection).

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Formed or acquired by, or resulting from, habit, frequent use, or custom.
  • According to or constituting a habit; existing as a habit or a fixed condition; customary; usual; regular: as, the habitual practice of sin; the habitual exercise of forbearance; habitual good or ill health.
  • Formed by repeated impressions; rendered permanent by continued causes: as, a habitual color of the skin
  • Synonyms Usual, Customary, Habitual; accustomed, wonted, regular, ordinary, every-day. As habit goes beyond custom in its regularity, so habitual goes beyond usual or customary. Indeed, habitual would now hardly be used where it was not meant that the habit was uniform and unbroken or firmly fixed as an element of character: as, habitual indolence. The other words lead up to this: usual, that which occurs much more often than not; customary, that which occurs in the larger part of all the cases. See custom.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Formed or acquired by habit or use.
  • adjective According to habit; established by habit; customary; constant.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Behaving in a regular manner, as a habit.
  • adjective Recurring, or that is performed over and over again.
  • adjective Regular or usual.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective commonly used or practiced; usual

Etymologies

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