habitual – English noun declension

English noun forms of habitual

Noun: habitual
Singularhabitual
Pluralhabituals

Sample Sentences

  • It has been suggested that we should classify prisoners as casuals and habituals. If a casual is to be distinguished from an habitual simply by the length of his sentence, this classification would hardly answer. [1870 January 20, G. Hutchinson, “XXIV. The Present State of the Prison Question in British India.”, in Twenty-fifth Annual Report of the Executive Committee of the Prison Association of New York, and Accompanying Documents, for the Year 1869. […] (New York State Senate; 1870, no. 21), Albany, N.Y.: The Argus Company, printers, →OCLC, page 433:]
  • However, in an era when legal punishment was dominated by principles of classical justice and Victorian political economy, what else could one do with the habituals other than provide for an accumulation of prison sentences: the more repeated one's crime, the longer one might be sentenced to imprisonment. [1997, John Pratt, “Dangerousness: The Birth of a Concept”, in Governing the Dangerous: Dangerousness, Law and Social Change, Leichhardt, N.S.W.: The Federation Press, →ISBN, page 31:]
  • Habituals, generally speaking, are the people who might in the context of college admissions be referred to as "legacies." These are people who choose to go into finance either because their parents or siblings work in finance, or because they've grown up with financiers in their immediate social circle. Strictly speaking, most Habituals make it to Wall Street on their own, but their upbringings (in wealthy or upper-middle-class communities) and their educational opportunities (at private high schools and top-tier colleges) have made finance a destination that, if not inevitable, is at least a known and respected option for people in their circumstances. [2014, Kevin Roose, chapter 11, in Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street’s Post-crash Recruits, New York, N.Y.: Grand Central Publishing, →ISBN:]
  • Since any situation that can be protracted sufficiently in time, or that can be iterated a sufficient number of times over a long enough period – and this means, in effect, almost any situation – can be expressed as a habitual, it follows that habituality is in principle combinable with various other aspectual values, namely those appropriate to the kind of situation that is prolonged or iterated. [1976, Bernard Comrie, “Perfective and Imperfective”, in Aspect: An Introduction to the Study of Verbal Aspect and Related Problems (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics; 2), Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, published 1998, →ISBN, section 1.2.1.1 (Habitual and Other Aspectual Values), page 30:]
  • Indeed, [Thomas] Givón (1994: 323) suggests the habitual is a 'hybrid modality', sharing some features of realis (higher assertive certainty) and some of irrealis ('lack of specific temporal reference; lack of specific evidence; …'). [2001, F[rank] R[obert] Palmer, “Subjunctive and Irrealis”, in Mood and Modality (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics), 2nd edition, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 191:]
  • Stative verbs such as know and see are not associated with [+perf] since, like habituals, they are associated with a generic operator. [2004, Elly van Gelderen, “Aspect: The Tense Aspect Parameter and Inner to Outer Aspect”, in Grammaticalization as Economy (Linguistik Aktuell = Linguistics Today; 71), Amsterdam; Philadelphia, Pa.: John Benjamins Publishing Company, →ISBN, →ISSN, section 5 (Giorgi & Pianesi: The Demise of the Infinitival Ending and Aspect), page 221:]
  • As an expression of the iterative habitual suffixal -s is by no means recent. It is found in emigrant letters from the early nineteenth century. [...] O'Hara's uses as an inflected first person singular as an iterative habitual, e.g. I hopes the [ ] family are well …, I hopes you will except [sic!] my thanks for the same … (Kean O'Hara, 1818–19). This usage is still to be found in east coast varieties of Irish English. [2007, Raymond Hickey, “The Emergence of Irish English”, in Irish English: History and Present-day Forms (Studies in English Language), Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 216:]
  • For example, repeated occurrence (iteratives or ‘habituals’) in English may be signalled by repeatedly or several times (‘He shouted repeatedly’), or it may be part of the meaning of the verb (‘The bird fluttered its wings’). [2007, Howard Jackson, “Grammar: Morphology and Syntax”, in Key Terms in Linguistics, London; New York, N.Y.: Continuum, →ISBN, page 23:]

Etymology

1. The adjective is derived from Late Middle English habitual (“of one's inherent disposition”), from Medieval Latin habituālis (“customary; habitual”), from Latin habitus (“character; disposition; habit; physical or emotional condition; attire, dress”) + -ālis (suffix forming adjectives of relationship); analysable as habit + -ual. Habitus is derived from habeō (“to have; to hold; to own; to possess”) (possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *gʰeh₁bʰ- (“to grab, take”)) + -tus (suffix forming action nouns from verbs).
2. The noun is derived from the adjective. See: Middle English Nouns 'habitual', Latin Nouns 'habitus'.