habitualadj/həˈbɪ.tʃʊ.əl/

• 1

  Of or relating to a habit; established as a habit; performed over and over again; recurrent, recurring.

  • Her habitual lying was the reason for my mistrust.
  • Thomas Aquinas attributeth preparation vnto free-vvill, but not conuerſion. Now this preparation hee thus coloureth, that it is indeed a furtherance to the habituall grace of cõuersion, but yet through the free aſsiſtance of God mouing vs inwardly.
• 2

  Regular or usual.

  • Professor Franklein took his habitual seat at the conference table.
  • Our hearts are ſaid to be purified by faith; Acts 15. 9. not our lives onely in the acts of holineſſe and purity, but our heart in the habituall frame of them.
• 3

  Of a person or thing: engaging in some behaviour as a habit or regularly.

  • He’s a habitual chain-smoker.
  • [N]o drunkard (i.e.) no Habituall, Impenitent drunkard, ſhall come into Gods Kingdome.
• 4

  grammarhuman-scienceslinguisticsPertaining to an action performed customarily, ordinarily, or usually.

  • In English, for instance, the Habitual Aspect (used to construction) can combine freely with Progressive Aspect, to give such forms as used to be playing.
  • The majority of South Arawak, Pareci-Xingu, and Peruvian Arawak languages have a three-fold aspect distinction: completive (completed, perfective or telic action); progressive (action/state in progress; also a durative meaning); and habitual.

habitualnoun/həˈbɪ.tʃʊ.əl/

• 1

  One who does something habitually, such as a serial criminal offender.

  • 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.
• 2

  grammarhuman-scienceslinguisticsA construction representing something done habitually.

  • 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; …').