accustom

Old French acoustumer, acustumer (Modern French accoutumer) corresponding to a (“to, toward”) + custom. More at custom, costume.

• IPA^(key): /ə.ˈkʌs.təm/

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accustom (third-person singular simple present accustoms, present participle accustoming, simple past and past participle accustomed)

1. (intransitive) To make familiar by use; to cause to accept; to habituate, familiarize, or inure. [+ to (object)]
   • ca. 1753, John Hawkesworth et al., Adventurer

     I shall always fear that he who accustoms himself to fraud in little things, wants only opportunity to practice it in greater.

   • 1910, Emerson Hough, chapter I, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, OCLC 639762314, page 0029:

     “[…] it is not fair of you to bring against mankind double weapons ! Dangerous enough you are as woman alone, without bringing to your aid those gifts of mind suited to problems which men have been accustomed to arrogate to themselves.”

2. (intransitive, obsolete) To be wont.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Carew to this entry?)

3. (intransitive, obsolete) To cohabit.
   • (Can we date this quote?) John Milton

     We with the best men accustom openly; you with the basest commit private adulteries.

• habituate, get used to, inure, exercise, train

• custom, customary

accustom (plural accustoms)

1. (obsolete) Custom.

• accustom in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.