I heard somebody say:
I used my mother to find my socks.
The moment I heard it, my first impression was that it meant something bad — a rather negative word choice. Then I looked up use in the Oxford English dictionary and chose the following two entries which may suit here.
- employ sth for a purpose; bring sth into service
- exploit sb/sth selfishly
Which is correct here?
Likewise, in
We have to use the police.
Is use here negative?
Use has a wide variety of meanings including
take, hold, or deploy (something) as a means of accomplishing a purpose or achieving a result; employ she used her key to open the front door
and
exploit (a person or situation) for one’s own advantage: I couldn’t help feeling that she was using me
When the term means take advantage of instead of simply employ is not obvious.
He used her
suggest a mercenary interaction. However consider it in context:
She offered to be a resource in accessing her network. He used her.
A neutral (if not positive) connotation.
When the use involves a role that the object is expected to play, it usually is not negative (e.g., the police example). When the role is excessive or one-sided, is usually is negative (e.g., mother doing unnecessary tasks). But context is everything.
This may be a case of the 'use and abuse' of the English language.
You are right, in the example you gave, 'use' is used in an exploitative sense.
In this sense, 'use' = abuse.
'I used a metal detector to find the fridge' conveys a different sense entirely.
Here, 'use' = use.
