Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A state of disuse or inactivity.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Discontinuance of use, practice, custom, or fashion; disuse: as, many words in every language have fallen into desuetude.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The cessation of use; disuse; discontinuance of practice, custom, or fashion.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun
disuse ,obsolescence (for example, the state of a custom that is no longer observed nor practised)
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a state of inactivity or disuse
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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One important point that was made concerned the degree to which England has over the last one thousand years had so much to do with The Low Countries (a phrase that is now in desuetude but which I use here as neutral code for both Flanders and The Netherlands), often to the mutual commercial benefit of each party and often in ways which enriched us culturally as well as economically.
Flemish Musings 2007
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One important point that was made concerned the degree to which England has over the last one thousand years had so much to do with The Low Countries (a phrase that is now in desuetude but which I use here as neutral code for both Flanders and The Netherlands), often to the mutual commercial benefit of each party and often in ways which enriched us culturally as well as economically.
Archive 2007-09-23 2007
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But when Trent rolled around the practice was already in desuetude, and only one lonely instance was somewhat doubtfully recorded of Vatican I.
11/01/2003 - 12/01/2003 John 2003
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Supporters of libertine sexuality should be mindful that desuetude is a “living” concept also — even under the phantasmagorical plurality of Stevens’ waxing dreamy in Casey: It appears that opponents of radical libertinism need merely to achieve a generational duration for their own position and even Casey’s expansive conceptual sweep, sweeps back with just as much double-edged force:
The Volokh Conspiracy » Recent Michigan Prosecutions for “Seducing an Unmarried Woman” 2010
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Toasts have also fallen into "desuetude" at private dinners.
The Complete Bachelor Manners for Men Walter Germain
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Finally, it set off a nice contrast between desuetude of their present condition and their pending leap into fame and fortune, provided they don't flush their prospects down the toilet, which is the premise of the story.
James Scarborough: Hollywood Fringe: The Dumb Waiter, Vespertine Productions & Girl Band in the Men's Room, Dirty Blonde Productions James Scarborough 2011
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Finally, it set off a nice contrast between desuetude of their present condition and their pending leap into fame and fortune, provided they don't flush their prospects down the toilet, which is the premise of the story.
James Scarborough: Hollywood Fringe: The Dumb Waiter, Vespertine Productions & Girl Band in the Men's Room, Dirty Blonde Productions James Scarborough 2011
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Finally, it set off a nice contrast between desuetude of their present condition and their pending leap into fame and fortune, provided they don't flush their prospects down the toilet, which is the premise of the story.
James Scarborough: Hollywood Fringe: The Dumb Waiter, Vespertine Productions & Girl Band in the Men's Room, Dirty Blonde Productions James Scarborough 2011
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I think this could [should] at least be grounds for a claim of desuetude.
The Volokh Conspiracy » Recent Michigan Prosecutions for “Seducing an Unmarried Woman” 2010
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Finally, it set off a nice contrast between desuetude of their present condition and their pending leap into fame and fortune, provided they don't flush their prospects down the toilet, which is the premise of the story.
James Scarborough: Hollywood Fringe: The Dumb Waiter, Vespertine Productions & Girl Band in the Men's Room, Dirty Blonde Productions James Scarborough 2011
rolig commented on the word desuetude
"The exaggerated exultation of the Futurists and Vorticists about machine-age death and destruction can partly be traced to the glut of pallid degeneration narratives on which they would have been drip-fed: dead-city poems by Rainer Maria Rilke and Henri de Régnier and Gabriele D’Annunzio, wispy lyrical novels and countless atmospheric travelogues that revisited the same tropes and clichés of urban exhaustion and desuetude."
- Patrick McGuinness, "Bruges, Paris and the spectres of Symbolism," Times Literary Supplement, 20 Dec. 2006, online: http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25338-2512863,00.html
September 23, 2007
rolig commented on the word desuetude
The dictionaries define it as "a state of disuse or inactivity," but that does not capture the romantic nostalgia that saturates the word. The disuse is potent precisely because of a former, not-quite-forgotten usefulness, a past vitality. Desuetude is, as it were, an etude on the passing of time.
September 23, 2007
yarb commented on the word desuetude
Used often by Conrad.
n.b. great commentary rolig.
January 1, 2008
jaltcoh commented on the word desuetude
Could you please convince them to let you write the dictionary, rolig?
March 14, 2008
shevek commented on the word desuetude
Alas, desuetude has fallen into desuetude!
May 25, 2008
Prolagus commented on the word desuetude
what jaltcoh said, rolig!
March 22, 2011