🙂 Familiar with ⏳ Did in the past

used to

1.3

To show that something was true or happened often in the past but is not true now

phrasal verb
/juːst tuː/

: soler

I used to live in New York before moving to London.

Examples

I used to live in a small town before moving to the city.
I used to play tennis every Saturday.
She used to play tennis every weekend with her friends.
They used to believe that the company would never close.
Did she use to live in Paris?
He used to go fishing with his grandfather every summer.
They used to have a pet dog, but it passed away last year.

Antonyms

still

∞ 1.0

Continuing to happen now

to continue

586 1.0

To stay in the same job or role

Surface Forms

used to past

use to infinitive

Morphology

used + to

There is a clear relation between 'used' (past/adj form of 'use' meaning accustomed) and the MWE meaning, but the grammaticalized pattern 'used to + (verb)' that expresses a past habitual state or being "accustomed" is not fully derivable from simply knowing the words 'use/used' and 'to'. Because the particle 'to' and the past-marked form combine into a conventionalized tense/aspect construction rather than a literal composition, a B1 learner may need prior exposure to reliably interpret it.

Etymology

The phrase used to comes from the idea of being used or 'accustomed' to do something, like a tool you used many times. Saying 'I used to live in New York' shows a past habit, so it means something happened often before but does not happen now.