(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.
Delusion
Definition:
(n.) The act of deluding; deception; a misleading of the mind.
(n.) The state of being deluded or misled.
(n.) That which is falsely or delusively believed or propagated; false belief; error in belief.
Example Sentences:
(1) The grand patriarch, battling dissent and delusion, coming in for another shot, a new king on the throne, an impossible future to face down.
(2) He continued: "There's quite a lot of complacency going on and self-delusion going on.
(3) Paranoid states is a term that covers a number of different disorders in which persecutory and grandiose ideas and delusions constitute a significant part of the symptoms.
(4) The observed psychiatric symptoms were classified into two categories: simple, including incidents of confusion alone or hallucinations with preserved insight, and complex, including delusions or chronic confusion without preserved insight.
(5) The idea that these problems exist on the other side of the world, and that we Australians can ignore them by sheltering comfortably in our own sequestered corner of the globe, is a fool’s delusion.” Brandis sought to reach out to Australian Muslims, saying the threat came “principally from a small number of people among us who try to justify criminal acts by perverting the meaning of Islam”.
(6) Of course, everyone who is not drawn in by the spectacle of a 69-year-old man with hair that clearly telegraphs its owner’s level of self-delusion and casual relationship to the truth is horrified at Trump’s ascendency in the Republican party primary.
(7) Schizophrenia is a severe psychiatric disorder characterized by onset in young adulthood, the occurrence of hallucinations and delusions, and the development of enduring psychosocial disability.
(8) The following differential signs were underlined: initial symptoms, such as rudimentary cenesthopathia, stable insomnia, etc., preceding the formation of delusions; appearance of episodic exacerbations in the form of short-time acute paranoiac states; a combination of paranoiac delusion with stable phasic affective disorders; unusual possession of delusional patients expressed in bizarre delusional behaviour, etc.
(9) Delusions have traditionally been regarded as unmodifiable false beliefs.
(10) To use a slightly dodgy analogy, standing one's moral ground in the midst of free-market capitalism might be a delusion akin to the idea of Socialism In One Country: if you believe in the usual left-liberal bundle of causes, politics is probably the best arena to pursue them, rather than fixating on what you do with your money.
(11) Upon his admission to Broadmoor in 1995, Napper had a number of delusions and thought people were out to get him.
(12) Although delusion remains one of the basic problems in psychopathology, attempts to understand its pathogenesis have been dominated by unsubstantiated speculation.
(13) The clinical picture is near-monthly recurrence of episodes of stupor or excitement lasting about 1 or 2 weeks, which are accompanied by delusion and in some cases also by hallucinations or confusion.
(14) Advantages of this definition are discussed and a distinction between delusions (about external reality) and certain actual experiences (happening in the patient's mind) is proposed.
(15) Delusions are common in the early phase of the disease.
(16) They are two separate creatures with very different structures, more like a virus and a host: co-dependent but each with delusions about who is the superior form of life.
(17) This for me is a time for mild pre- Christmas nausea, caused by the annual destruction of a persistent adult delusion, instilled during schooldays, that this is a time for gradually relaxing and then having literally nothing to do for the week leading up to Christmas Day.
(18) Journalists, media types, and the delusive Edinburgh Comedy festival are complicit in supporting a broken system.
(19) In my defence, this has nothing to do with delusions of sophistication (though it would be about time).
(20) Variations in MAO activity were not significantly associated with the 65 clinical variables analyzed, although there was a tendency for patients in the low-MAO group to have more severely impaired reality testing, more paranoid and grandiose delusions, better prognostic scores, and less restlessness.