▪ I. user1
(ˈjuːzə(r))
Also 6 Sc. usar.
[f. use v. + -er1. Cf. OF. useur.]
1. a. One who has or makes use of a thing; one who uses or employs anything.
| c 1400 Love Bonavent. Mirr. (1908) 70 So ofte þe maker and þe vsere offendeth god. a 1425 tr. Arderne's Treat. Fistula, etc. 8 Þe forseid [counsels]..shal giffe a gracious going to þe vser to þe hiȝte of worship. 1467 in Eng. Gilds (1870) 387 That it be so stopped by the doers or vsers therof. 1579 J. Northbrooke Dicing (1843) 177 God graunt that..the magistrates..may..set sharpe punishment for the vsers and teachers thereof. c 1600 Shakes. Sonn. ix, But beauties waste hath in the world an end, And kept vnvsde the vser so destroyes it. 1626 Donne Serm. (1640) 675 As he [sc. God] sees him a good or bad user of his graces. 1683 Tryon Way to Health 223 These Superfluities..are become as it were Essential to the Nature of the Users. 1711 Countrey-Man's Lett. Curat. 58 What tho' all our Reformers had been users and readers of the English Service? 1738 Warburton Div. Legat. I. 84 The utmost Consumption may be made..without Injury to the User. 1846 Greener Sci. Gunnery p. vii, The safety of the user of guns. 1846 Mozley Ess. (1878) I. 251 He is a user of Puritanism. 1862 Cornh. Mag. VI. 608 A moderate user of tobacco. 1876 Whitney Language & its Study iii. 74 It seeks..to save time and labour to the users of language. |
b. A person who takes narcotic, etc., drugs.
orig. U.S.| 1935 A. J. Pollock Underworld Speaks 129/2 User, a person addicted to any of the poisonous habit forming drugs; a hop-head; dope fiend. 1953 W. Burroughs Junkie (1964) vi. 58 The owner knew Tony had been a user and had told him to stay off the stuff or get another job. 1969 Guardian 3 Dec. 9/1 She was taking six grains of heroin a day... She had been a user for about six months. 1975 H. White Raincoast Chron. (1976) 144/2 There had always been users around in the shadowy back streets. 1983 Easyriders Feb. 111/4 Harley man, 29..seeks lady 5{p}7{pp} or under for friend, lover, and partner... No boozers or heavy users. |
c. spec. A person or organization that makes use of a computer. Freq.
attrib. and
Comb. (
cf. sense 5 below).
| 1967 [see user-assigned adj., sense 5 below]. 1973 C. W. Gear Introd. Computer Sci. iv. 151 The software makes it possible for a user to prepare procedures and have them executed by the computer with a minimum of effort. 1984 Which Micro? Dec. 8/1 Micro breakdown..drives users to despair. |
† 2. Sc. One who puts a writ, etc., in force or execution.
Obs.| 1576 in Excheq. Rolls Scotl. XX. 504 David Fowlar,..usar of the said precept, declarit that he deliverit [it]..to John Kellie. 1609 Skene Reg. Maj., Forme of Proces 122 The wreit or evident is declared to be fals:..And the vser thereof, is punished capitallie. c 1630 Sir T. Hope Minor Practicks (1734) 242 If the King..give a Letter of Regress;..when the Order of Redemption is used and declared, the User of the Redemption is immediately seased, upon the Sight of the Regress. |
† 3. A usurer.
Obs.—1| 1566 Drant Horace, Sat. i. ii. A viij b, What soeuer cums by vsers skylle, to get, and gender more. |
4. north. dial. A useful animal.
| 1828 Carr Craven Gloss. s.v., A cow is said to be a good user, when she yields abundance of milk, &c. 1863 Mrs. Toogood Yorks. Dial. (MS.). |
5. attrib. and
Comb., (
esp. in sense 1 b) as
user benefit,
user charge,
user cost,
user fee,
user group;
user-assigned,
user-supplied adjs.;
user-processing;
user-definable a. Computers, having a function or meaning that can be specified and varied by a user; so
user-defined a.;
user-friendly a. Computers, easy to use; designed with the needs of users in mind; also
transf.; hence
user-friendliness;
user interface, the means by which a person is enabled to use a computer;
user-orientated,
-oriented adjs., designed with the user's convenience given priority;
user-programmable a. Computers, capable of being programmed or assigned a function by the user.
| 1967 Cox & Grose Organization & Handling Bibl. Rec. by Computer 84 The valves dcn, date, day, etc. are the user-assigned names for the bibliographic date fields. 1972 Computers & Humanities VI. 303 We will study the cost-effectiveness of stripping away various features..with least prejudice to user-benefit. |
| 1945 Sun (Baltimore) 29 Sept. 3/2 John J. Pelley, president of the Association of American Railroads, urged..that ‘user charges’ be levied against highway, waterway and airway carriers. 1976 Times 29 Nov. 12/2 It is possible to raise only one cheer for user charges as a means of avoiding the dilemma of cutting public services or increasing taxes. |
| 1936 J. M. Keynes Gen. Theory Employment vi. 70 We have defined the user cost as the reduction in the value of the equipment due to using it as compared with not using it. 1969 D. C. Hague Managerial Economics (1971) ii. v. 103 The cost of servicing and repairs is part of what economists call ‘user cost’, the cost of using the car (or any other asset) instead of leaving it idle. 1972 IBM Technical Disclosure Bull. XIV. 3553 (heading) Representation of tree data structures as matrices suitable for user⁓definable traversing. 1983 MicroComputer Printout Sept. 69/1 A programmable character set (also called user⁓definable) may let you design your own characters—mathematical symbols, or foreign alphabets. 1985 Personal Computer World Feb. 133/1 The number of user⁓definable characters that you can enter at the Model 4 Keyboard in this way is limited to 20. |
| 1968 Simulation XI. 304/2 User-defined functions. 1984 Which? July 302/1 In rating graphics..we looked at..the range of graphics features provided with the computer-graphics characters,..sprites,..user-defined graphics (shapes you can set up yourself) and so on. 1984 Personal Software Winter 26/2 The program will allow you to have up to fifty user defined commands. |
| 1980 Tucson (Arizona) Star 4 Mar., He sees no reason why ‘user fees’..should not be charged for libraries. 1984 Gainesville (Florida) Sun 2 Mar. 12a/5 It is clear that (Proposition 1) fails to allow for increased demand on government-owned utilities and other user-fee services resulting from population increases and other causes. |
| 1979 Interfaces May 72 User friendliness is a term coined by Harlan Crowder to represent the inherent ease (or lack of ease) which is encountered when running a computer system. 1982 Daily Tel. 7 Dec. 2 (Advt.), The system has been very well received—a credit to the HP 3000's user-friendliness. |
| 1977 Birss & Yeh Set Theoretic Data Structures (STDS) 31 STDS-I does not provide the user with a sufficiently ‘user-friendly’ interface to allow noncomputer scientists to easily work with a data base. 1982 New Scientist 30 Sept. 931/1 The program it works from is ‘user-friendly’ insofar as the commands are based on initials such as CV for ‘centre vertically’ and FD for ‘forms design’. 1984 Which Micro? Dec. 3 (Advt.), Every computer manufacturer now claims its products are ‘user friendly’. 1984 Listener 13 Dec. 38/1 No TV show (not even the news) could close without reference to this user-friendly family of dolls. |
| 1972 Accountant 26 Oct. 518/2 To satisfy the information needs of entrepreneurs, investors, and other outside user-groups is to guarantee a full and active future for the accountant. 1983 Lebende Sprachen XXVIII. 48/1 Language mediators represent one of the largest user groups of terminology. |
| 1968 Proc. Internat. Fed. Information Processing (1969) I. ii. 570 Three levels of user interface are defined for the information retrieval language. 1983 Byte Feb. 36/1 The company's first task was to devise a new user interface—that is, a new and better way for humans to interact with the computer. 1985 Personal Computer World Feb. 137/2 The operating system, GSX and GEM Services bind together to form the programmer interface, but they do not provide the user interface directly. |
| 1969 Computer Aided Design Winter 5/2 The plea for more languages..which are specific to particular problems, and in this sense ‘user⁓orientated’. 1978 Hi-Fi News Sept. 218 (Advt.), There's a low distortion equaliser, tape duplication switch..plus a host of user-orientated features. |
| 1964 Communications Assoc. Computing Machinery VII. 290/1 (heading) An experiment in a user-oriented computer system. 1979 Dictionaries I. 110 User-oriented service programs..could put the student in immediate contact with a wealth of lexicographic information. |
| 1958 Newnes Compl. Amat. Photogr. 283 Kodak Ltd. propose eventually to market processing kits..for the user-processing of Kodacolor Film. 1976 Scientific & Technical Aerospace Rep. XIV. xxii. 2927/1 To fulfil all desired capabilities, a user programmable communication device is required. 1983 What's New in Computing Jan. 60/1 The full alphanumeric and function key keypad..includes..eight user-programmable keys. |
| 1969 Computers & Humanities III. 130 It contains the ability to perform, inter alia, the following tasks:... Generate reports of extracted data according to user-supplied format. |
Add:
[1.] d. One who manipulates others for personal advantage.
colloq. (
orig. N. Amer.).
| 1982 M. Atwood Bodily Harm v. 247 He's a politician so he's a user. 1984 E. Jong Parachutes & Kisses xix. 328 He was another Josh Ace (sweet-seeming younger man with the soul of a user). 1988 A. Macrae Awful Childhoods xi. 129 What a user!.. And he never contributed a thing to the meal. |
[5.] user-hostile a., of a machine, etc.: not at all user-friendly; not designed with the user in mind.
| 1983 N.Y. Times 11 Oct. c9/4 It will be some time before they [sc. computers] will be tamed sufficiently to be handled by teachers who still consider movie projectors *user-hostile. 1987 Daily Tel. 13 Apr. 24/3 Gone was the three-box format of the IBM PC; gone the user-hostile environment of operating systems and obscure commands. |
user-unfriendly a., not user-friendly.
| 1981 Economist 16 May 55/1 The winners will be those whose machines do not bristle with difficulty and are ‘user-friendly’. Prestel, with its numerical codes, is, in the view of many, ‘*user-unfriendly’. 1984 Byte Feb. 160/2 One of the most popular general-purpose benchmarks is the Sieve of Eratosthenes, probably the most user-unfriendly title in the business. (I'm not sure how to pronounce ‘Sieve’, let alone ‘Eratosthenes’.) 1988 Computer Weekly 28 Apr. 26/1 Traditional multiuser mini-computer systems, with their dull, user-unfriendly, character-based terminal interfaces, are likely to be displaced..by local area networks of PCs. |
hence
user-unfriendliness n.| 1983 Computerworld 21 Feb. 21/1 Insci's personnel administration system offered ‘the best price, the most flexibility and the least {oqq}*user-unfriendliness{cqq}’, Isacoff said. 1989 Car & Driver Oct. 116/2 It's yet another unit that suffers from user-unfriendliness. |
Hence
ˈusership n., the fact or condition of being a user;
concr. the users of a product, service, etc., collectively; the number of such users.
| 1957 Inside ACD X. i. 3/1 A trade magazine, Steel, now claims to have more than readership; it has usership (‘what happens when exciting, stimulating information and ideas are delivered to men who will do something about them’). 1982 N.Y. Times 3 Feb. d6/6, I can foresee a general trend away from ownership to usership. People are finding that too much of their disposable income is being tied up in the cost of owning things. 1983 Marketing & Media Decisions Fall 53/1 Another big plus is that interactive videotex is measurable, unlike other media that share videotex'[s] upscale usership. |
▸
username n. Computing a unique name or set of characters by which each user of a shared network, system, or program is identified, used (
freq. in conjunction with a password) to log in.
| 1971 A. Bhushan Request for Comments (Network Working Group) (Electronic text) No. 172. 7 *Username and password identifiers contain the respective identifying information. Normally, the information will be supplied by the user of the file transfer service. 1997 J. Seabrook Deeper v. 149 By typing ‘bio’ and then the username, you could find out the user's real name. |
▪ II. ˈuser2 Law.
[a. F. user to use, or inferred from non-user. Cf. the earlier abuser2, disuser.] Continued use, exercise, or enjoyment of a right, etc.; presumptive right arising from use.
| 1835 Crompton, Meeson, & Roscoe Rep. Cases I. 418 marg., No right having been acquired by user or length of possession. 1858 Ld. St. Leonards Handy-bk. Prop. Law xxv. 191 That there should be an user proved every year during the period. 1888 Pall Mall G. 29 Feb. 1/1 An open space in which the public has an uninterrupted right of user for purposes of public meeting. |
| transf. 1875 Blackmore Alice Lorraine II. xvi. 207 A crust of mud, as if some underground duct were anxious to maintain user of its right of way. |
| attrib. 1897 Westm. Gaz. 16 June 4/2 In which [judgement] there was only one slight reference to the user question. |