Abuse, misuse, mistreat, maltreat, ill-treat and outrage all denote to use or treat a person or thing improperly or wrongfully.
Abuse and misuse are capable of wider use than the others, for they do not invariably imply either deliberateness or wantonness.
- I can’t abuse your generosity to that extent. You’re doing more than enough for me already.
—Mackenzie - It turns a man’s stomach to hear the Scripture misused in that way.
—George Eliot
Abuse, however, commonly suggests perversion of the ends for which something was intended.
- The constitution leaves them [the states] this right in the confidence that they will not abuse it.
—John Marshall
Sometimes it implies excess in use that injures or impairs.
- abuse one’s strength
Misuse, by contrast with abuse, emphasizes the actual mistreatment or misapplication rather than its results.
- The intent of this regulation is highly commendable, namely to keep the Indians from being misused.
—Hitchcock
Mistreat, maltreat, and illtreat usually imply a fault or an evil motive in the agent, such as meanness, culpable ignorance, or spitefulness.
- Many more patients die from being mistreated for consumption than from consumption itself.
— Lytton - The meter, though a well-known English critic has maltreated it of late, is a very fine one.
—Saintsbury - have small compunction in ill-treating animals, because they have no souls
—Repplier
Outrage implies abuse so violent or extreme as to exceed all bounds.
- an act that outraged nature and produced the inevitable tragedy of the play
— Auchincloss