Definition of "usance" [us•ance]

• The length of time, established by custom and varying between countries, that is allowed for payment of a foreign bill of exchange. (noun)
• Use. (noun)
• Usage; custom. (noun)
• Interest paid on borrowed money. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Everything in it, tolerable or intolerable, will have but one use; and that use what our ancestors used to call usance or usury."
• "This double usance from London to Paris through Amsterdam gives four months—and we pay here to Robert Morris the value of the livres payable in Paris on the day when the bills are payable by you in London respectively, this gives at least seven months."
• "    Yet this bounty the while, these gifts ancestral of usance"