Meaning of habitual | Babel Free

Definitions

1. Of or relating to a habit; established as a habit; performed over and over again; recurrent, recurring
2. One who does something habitually, such as a serial criminal offender.
   colloquial
3. Regular or usual
4. A construction representing something done habitually.
5. Of a person or thing: engaging in some behaviour as a habit or regularly
6. Pertaining to an action performed customarily, ordinarily, or usually
7. One who does something habitually, such as a serial criminal offender

Equivalents

Examples

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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; …').”

“Stative verbs such as know and see are not associated with [+perf] since, like habituals, they are associated with a generic operator.”

“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.”

“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’).”

CEFR level