(v. t.) 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.
(v. t.) 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.
(v. t.) To revile; to reproach coarsely; to disparage.
(v. t.) To dishonor.
(v. t.) To violate; to ravish.
(v. t.) To deceive; to impose on.
(v. t.) 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.
(v. t.) Physical ill treatment; injury.
(v. t.) A corrupt practice or custom; offense; crime; fault; as, the abuses in the civil service.
(v. t.) Violation; rape; as, abuse of a female child.
Example Sentences:
(1) Unfortunately, due to confidentiality clauses that have been imposed on us by the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, we are unable to provide our full names and … titles … However, we believe the evidence that will be submitted will validate the statements that we are making in this submission.” The submission detailed specific allegations – including names and dates – of sexual abuse of child detainees, violence and bullying of children, suicide attempts by children and medical neglect.
(2) The authors empirically studied the self-medication hypothesis of drug abuse by examining drug effects and motivation for drug use in 494 hospitalized drug abusers.
(3) Alcohol abuse remains the predominant cause of chronic liver disease in the Western world.
(4) With respect to family environment, a history of sexual abuse was associated with perceptions that families of origin had less cohesion, more conflict, less emphasis on moral-religious matters, less emphasis on achievement, and less of an orientation towards intellectual, cultural, and recreational pursuits.
(5) An official inquiry into the Rotherham abuse scandal blamed failings by Rotherham council and South Yorkshire police.
(6) Former detectives had dug out damning evidence of abuse, as well as testimony from officers recommending prosecution, sources said.
(7) After these two experimental years, a governmental institute for prevention of child abuse and neglect was organized.
(8) Stringer, a Vietnam war veteran who was knighted in 1999, is already inside the corporation, if only for a few months, after he was appointed as one of its non-executive directors to toughen up the BBC's governance following a string of scandals, from the Jimmy Savile abuse to multimillion-pound executive payoffs.
(9) History contains numerous examples of government secrecy breeding abuse.
(10) This preliminary study compared the level of ego development, as measured by Loevinger's Washington University Sentence Completion Test (SCT), of 30 women with histories of childhood sexual victimization, and 30 women with no history of abuse.
(11) The District became a byword for crime and drug abuse, while its “mayor for life” lived high on the hog and lurched cheerfully from one scandal to the next.
(12) An official from Cafcass, the children and family court advisory service, tried to persuade the child in several interviews, but eventually the official told the court that further persuasion was inappropriate and essentially abusive.
(13) A series of hierarchical multiple regressions revealed the effects of Surgency, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, and Intellect on evoking upset in spouses through condescension (e.g., treating spouse as stupid or inferior), possessiveness (demanding too much time and attention), abuse (slapping spouse), unfaithfulness (having sex with others), inconsiderateness (leaving toilet seat up), moodiness (crying a lot), alcohol abuse (drinking too much alcohol), emotional constriction (hiding emotions to act tough), and self-centeredness (acting selfishly).
(14) Its abuse has become concentrated among post-high school age, black males in a limited number of cities, especially Washington, DC.
(15) From a clinical standpoint, it is clear that psychiatrists caring for anxious patients must be aware of the possibility of secondary alcohol abuse.
(16) A thorough nursing assessment is essential to detect and correct drug misuse and to diagnose drug abuse.
(17) Substantial percentages of both physicians and medical students reported access to drugs, family histories of substance abuse, stress at work and home, emotional problems, and sensation seeking.
(18) Subjects with past history of chronic substance abuse, neurologic disease, or focal findings on MRI or CT were excluded.
(19) And any Labour commitment on spending is fatally undermined by their deficit amnesia.” Davey widened the attack on the Tories, following a public row this week between Clegg and Theresa May over the “snooper’s charter”, by accusing his cabinet colleague Eric Pickles of coming close to abusing his powers by blocking new onshore developments against the wishes of some local councils.
(20) Again, the boys in care that he abused now speak to us as broken adults.
Cruelty
Definition:
(n.) The attribute or quality of being cruel; a disposition to give unnecessary pain or suffering to others; inhumanity; barbarity.
(n.) A cruel and barbarous deed; inhuman treatment; the act of willfully causing unnecessary pain.
Example Sentences:
(1) Solzhenitsyn was acknowledged as a "truth-teller" and a witness to the cruelties of Stalinism of unusual power and eloquence.
(2) Butler was convicted of grevious bodily harm and child cruelty, and sentenced to prison.
(3) So it was with cruelty – the same cruelty seen in the enactment of the Muslim travel ban and the gamble with the healthcare of 24 million people – that Trump signed an executive order to begin construction immediately .
(4) She believes her explorations – of their vanities, their blindnesses, their cruelties, of the brief moments in which they attain goodness, or glimpse a kind of realistic, unselfish love – to be of urgent importance.
(5) The FN has made political capital about cruelty to animals in the preparation of halal and kosher meat in the past, and its MEPs are preparing a resolution that would limit shale gas exploration, despite the party voting against a shale moratorium in the last parliament.
(6) In 2005, four years after Adam's body was found, two women and a man were convicted of child cruelty for torturing and threatening to kill an orphaned refugee who they claimed was a witch.
(7) Strong objections to certain features of this system have not only been raised by national and international societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals but also by ethologists.
(8) Finally, Sybil Burton gave in, claiming cruelty and that her husband was "in the constant company of another woman," which Newsweek called "the throwaway line of the decade".
(9) His mother, devoted and stoic, read aloud the sad, true stories of cruelty and passion between the wars contained in his father's briefs for the divorce court.
(10) The heads of the World Health Organisation, Unicef, the Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the World Food Programme and the UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, urged political leaders to use their influence to solve the crisis and criticised what they described as "an insufficient sense of urgency among the governments and parties that could put a stop to the cruelty and carnage in Syria".
(11) Why does the sight, or even the mere thought, of the obese excite such venom, disgust and outright cruelty?
(12) Those who doubted football's capacity for cruelty ought to have been on hand in Paris - much in the manner that Thierry Henry was for France .
(13) She served either as a director or council member of the Conservation Society, Soil Association, Animal Defence Society, Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and Society for the Protection of Animals.
(14) They are not motivated by cruelty but by a powerful desire to push the frontiers of medical research and develop therapies for debilitating diseases.
(15) Labour now wants to own this mantle of macho, to keep the momentum of cruelty going in the name of responsibility, But lets get real.
(16) It predicts: "As these conflicts and crises grow ever more intense, and as the ruling elite continues with impunity to crush and to strip away the rights of citizens to freedom, to property, and to the pursuit of happiness, we see the powerless in our society – the vulnerable groups, the people who have been suppressed and monitored, who have suffered cruelty and even torture, and who have had no adequate avenues for their protests, no courts to hear their pleas -– becoming more militant and raising the possibility of a violent conflict of disastrous proportions.
(17) Jennie Gray was sentenced to 42 months in jail for child cruelty and for her part in the cover-up, while Butler was also handed a five-year sentence for child cruelty over a series of untreated injuries in the weeks and months before her death.
(18) Liberal and Labor have moved close together on cruelty to refugees to cutting funding to universities and on increasing coal exports, so I am not in the least bit surprised you’ve got this collusion,” she said.
(19) Would people bring their children to SeaWorld if they knew the cruelty behind the orca whale circus show?
(20) Recognition of unacceptable cruelty to animals in pasttimes such as bull-baiting, dates in Britain from the early 19th century.