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REFERENCE

use to

fixed phrase.
B1 Intermediate General-service
Definition

fixed phrase. you use this to talk about something that happened often in the past but does not happen now.

fixed phrase. a semi-modal construction used to express habitual actions or states in the past that have since ceased. It functions as a marginal modal or a lexical auxiliary depending on the syntactic analysis.


SIMPLE

I used to play football every Saturday when I was younger.

CONTEXTUAL

She used to live in London, but she moved to a small village last year for a quieter life.

COMPLEX

The building used to serve as a local library before it was repurposed into a modern community hub for digital arts.

Usage

always followed by the base form of a verb.

Teaching tip

contrast with 'be used to' (familiarity) and 'get used to' (process of becoming familiar); emphasize that 'used to' has no present tense form.

Pitfall

I didn't used to like spinach.I didn't use to like spinach.in negative sentences and questions with 'did', the 'd' is dropped because 'did' already indicates the past tense.

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