subs. (American).—Liking.
c. 1889. Transactions of the American Philological Association [Century]. I have no USE for him—don’t like him.
1613. WEBSTER, The Devil’s Law-case, i. 2.
| Waiting Woman. Very well, sir, | |
| You may USE me at your pleasure. | |
| Rom. By no means, Winifred; that were the way | |
| To make thee travail again. |
TO USE AT (or ROUND) A PLACE, verb. phr. (thieves’).—To haunt, frequent.
1887. J. W. HORSLEY, Jottings from Jail, i. I got in company with some of the widest (cleverest) people in London. They used TO USE AT (frequent) a pub in Shoreditch.
TO USE UP, verb. phr. (colloquial).—To exhaust, wear out, DO FOR (q.v.): whence USED UP = broken-hearted, bankrupt, fatigued, vanquished, killed, etc. (GROSE).
1834. SEBA SMITH (‘Major Downing’), Jack Downing’s Letters, i. 29. [Moving on the first day in May in New York] has USED ME UP worse than building forty rods of stone wall.
1835. R. H. DANA, Jr., Two Years Before the Mast, xxviii. Such a sight I never saw before … ‘cleaned out’ to the last real, and completely USED UP.
1855. C. KINGSLEY, Westward Ho! i. Half were USED-UP … with the scurvy.
1855. HALIBURTON (‘Sam Slick’), Nature and Human Nature, 192. Well, being out night arter night, she got kinder USED UP and beat out, and unbeknownest to me used to take opium.
1856. KANE, Arctic Explorations, II. 100. Hans has been really ill; five days down with severe pains of the limbs have left him a ‘little weak,’ which with him means well USED UP.
1871. C. S. CALVERLEY, Verses and Translations, ‘Beer.’
| But what is coffee, but a noxious berry, | |
| Born to keep USED-UP Londoners awake? |
1876. J. GRANT, One of the Six Hundred, iii. His whole air had the ‘USED UP’ bearing of those miserable dundrearys who affect to act as if youth, wealth, and luxury were the greatest calamities that flesh is heir to, and that life itself was a bore.
1887. Daily Telegraph, 5 March. We have USED UP no fewer than six Irish Secretaries in little more than as many years.
