In the English Vocabulary Profile at B1:
If something used to happen or a situation used to exist, it happened regularly or in the past but it does not happen or exist now.
In the English Grammar Profile at B1:
Point 60 in MODALITY:
‘used to’ to talk about repeated actions or states in the past that are no longer true.
Point 32 in VERBS:
semi-modal auxiliary verbs, ‘used to’ and ‘ought to’
*We have already got dedicated pages to semi-modals: See an overview of ‘ought to‘ and ‘used to’ as semi-modal.
Since we have covered the affirmative of ‘used to’ this post is dedicated to expanding the negative form which is very rare:
An iWeb search for:
did _XX use to _VVI
1 DIDN’T USE TO BE 133
2 DID N’T USE TO HAVE 61
3 DID NOT USE TO BE 39
4 DIDN’T USE TO DO 27
5 DIDN’T USE TO HAPPEN 20
6 DIDN’T USE TO LIKE 11
7 DIDN’T USE TO THINK 9
PELIC STUDENT EXAMPLE:
When I talk about fast food in my culture, which is in Saudi Arabia,
we will observe that the people there didn’t use to eat fast food in the past,
but now many people eat fast food.
Arabic male level 4 writing class.
TLC STUDENT SPOKEN EXAMPLE:
In high school, I didn’t use to study English.
Spain B2