habituation

noun ha·bit·u·a·tion \ -ˌbi-chə-ˈwā-shən , -chü-ˈā- \

|Updated on: 17 Aug 2018

Definition of habituation

1 : the process of habituating : the state of being habituated

2 a : tolerance to the effects of a drug acquired through continued use

b : psychological dependence on a drug after a period of use — compare addiction

3 : decrease in responsiveness upon repeated exposure to a stimulus

Recent Examples of habituation from the Web

But how could habituation happen in unicellular organisms without neurons?

— katia moskvitch, WIRED, "Slime Molds Remember—But Do They Learn?," 14 July 2018
Instead, the novel is an ode to the clumsier physicality of companionship, where bonds of friendship and love strain against the entropic forces of distance, irritation and habituation.

— alexandra kleeman, New York Times, "Fluid Friendships: A Literary Ode to the Shifting Nature of Human Bonds," 8 June 2018
In 2014, Monica Gagliano, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Western Australia in Perth, found that Mimosa plants can retain their habituation for at least a month.

— eoin o'carroll, The Christian Science Monitor, "What slime molds can teach us about thinking," 12 Apr. 2018
When everyone connects and reads and works and plays on a smartphone. * * * Apple’s announcement revealed two new approaches to manage its fall into habituation.

— ian bogost, The Atlantic, "The Empire of Apple," 12 Sep. 2017
But that can also come with risk of habituation and abuse.

— mandy oaklander, Time, "New Hope for Depression," 27 July 2017
The researchers wanted to see if age, habituation, or training influenced the dog's tendency to follow a human's gaze.

— enikő kubinyi, National Geographic, "One More Reason Dogs Are More Like Us Than We Thought," 31 Aug. 2016
But through habituation, or paucity of talent, or lack of originality, most of us, writing, reach for the most workaday speech-tools, and in this way the world is made dull.

— george saunders, The New Yorker, "Grace Paley, the Saint of Seeing," 3 Mar. 2017
And they’d better get their habituation done in college, because the world beyond college will be far less willing to accommodate requests for trigger warnings and opt-outs.

— greg lukianoff, The Atlantic, "The Coddling of the American Mind," 20 Nov. 2015

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'habituation.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

First Known Use of habituation

15th century

in the meaning defined at sense 1

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Medical Dictionary

habituation

noun ha·bit·u·a·tion \ -ˌbich-ə-ˈwā-shən \

medical Definition of habituation

1 : the act or process of making habitual or accustomed

2 a : tolerance to the effects of a drug acquired through continued use

b : psychological dependence on a drug after a period of use — compare addiction

3 : a form of nonassociative learning characterized by a decrease in responsiveness upon repeated exposure to a stimulus — compare sensitization 3

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habituation

Definition of habituation

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