(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.
Misapply
Definition:
(v. t.) To apply wrongly; to use for a wrong purpose; as, to misapply a name or title; to misapply public money.
Example Sentences:
(1) The concept of normalization, if misapplied, can lead to the same result.
(2) Two patients were missing tubal rings on one side, and the remaining patient had a tubal ring misapplied to the round ligament.
(3) Problems have arisen because the concept has been misapplied.
(4) Finally, the evidence for misapplied constancy scaling in the horizontal-vertical illusion in relation to a retinal theory is discussed.
(5) Limited attempts to explain size illusions in terms of the projected stimuli that preserve perceptual constancy are by no means new; Thiéry (51) proposed such a view in the later part of the last century, and in recent times there has been a spate of such proposals including the " misapplied constancy hypothesis" advanced by Gregory (2).
(6) It is shown that his categories have been regularly misapplied in the interest of establishing the scientific status of psychoanalysis, or of proposing a new theoretical structure.
(7) Elastic traction is an important but occasionally misapplied component of upper-extremity dynamic splints.
(8) Because of his lack of clinical material or anecdotal illustration, Hartmann's theoretical scaffolding has been frequently misunderstood and misapplied.
(9) But even one it authors, Republican Jim Sensenbrenner, has questioned whether the act has been misapplied in the cases revealed to the Guardian by former CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
(10) But a team of academics re-examined the DfE's figures and said it had crudely distorted and misapplied the data.
(11) Suárez’s lawyer, Alejandro Balbi, successfully argued that Fifa had misapplied its own rules when considering the case and that the sanction it imposed on other football-related activities involving the Uruguayan was disproportionate.
(12) Statistical significance and P values are often misunderstood and frequently misapplied.
(13) Central to the argument is that the minister “misconstrued or misapplied” his powers to cancel Newman’s visa, and that he did not take into account Newman’s right to political communication.
(14) Anthony Hudson, representing the media that had applied for reporting restrictions to be lifted, had argued that the Judicial Proceedings (Regulation of Reports) Act 1926 was designed to "prevent injury to public morals" and was being misapplied as means of enforcing privacy in divorce proceedings.
(15) "A very tiny exception" Dominic Young, a former chairman of the NLA, argued that 2013's supreme court case, which the ECJ concurred with, misapplied the temporary copying exemption.
(16) May said that at best stop and search applied fairly could lead to arrests and build community confidence in the police but at worst when it was misapplied it undermined public confidence and wasted police time.
(17) If the tribunal misunderstands the code, or misapplies it, they’ve applied a standard which is not the standard of conduct applicable to the conduct of the practitioner.
(18) (5) Apply epidemiological expertise where it is called for, and do not misapply it where it is unlikely to help.
(19) He said: "Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies."
(20) BP misinterprets and misapplies data while ignoring published literature that doesn’t support its claims,” the trustees said in a statement .