The usual thing is done frequently or continuously.
Habitual is a concept that derives from habĭtus , a Latin term. It is an adjective that refers to what is done, has or suffers continuously or frequently .
For example: “It is usual for Dr. López to be late when he has a board meeting” , “As usual, the street was flooded with heavy rains” , “It is not usual for this team to score three goals in a match ” .
The usual, something everyday
Habitual, therefore, is associated with habits . A habit is a way of acting that is sustained on a daily basis by repeating certain actions, either out of habit or instinct . Suppose that a person, after dinner and before going to bed, usually drinks a glass of cognac. It could be said, then, that this subject has the habit of drinking cognac at night or, in other words, that it is customary for him to drink this drink.
It is important to keep in mind that the repetition inherent in what is habitual is neither good nor bad: what is relevant is what is repeated. There are numerous positive habits, such as washing your hands before eating, doing physical activity every morning or recycling waste. On the other hand, other habits are negative for the person or for society : smoking, throwing papers on the floor... the ideal, of course, is to make positive behaviors become habitual and banish negative actions from behavior.
Beyond what human beings do, the idea of habitual can also be applied to nature or other issues. It may be common for it to snow over a certain city or for a certain stream to dry up in the summer, to name two possibilities.
Brushing your teeth should be a regular thing to take care of your oral health.
About the meaning of the term
Although the word habitual does not belong to the cultured language, but can be understood by any Spanish speaker, it is true that it is not usually used in everyday speech as frequently as some of its synonyms, in particular "normal." Others are listed below: current, usual, accustomed, ordinary and frequent . In this case, we could cite the antonyms abnormal, unusual, infrequent and unusual .
Of course, as is the case with most words, their synonyms do not always have the same meaning, but rather they share some of their meanings, or even part of them, and that is why they serve as a resource to avoid redundancy in discourse. But this does not mean that we can exchange all these words without making any distinction.
Usual and normal
Take for example the case of the word normal : among its first meanings, the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy tells us that it describes something "in its natural state", something that is "ordinary or habitual", but also "that can be used in rule or norm " or "that can be adjusted to certain previously established norms, given their magnitude, form or nature."
Here we find a synonym that has a completely different face, with a meaning that the usual term could not represent without a context that completes it. In fact, it could even be used to describe an absolutely opposite situation. Let's look at the following example to understand this point of view:
«María lives immersed in a society in which it is normal for men to get the best jobs , with the highest salaries, and to take ownership of the merits of women, who are usually located below them in the corporate hierarchy. However, she is the president of her own company, one she founded more than two decades ago. For her, it is common to receive praise for her performance and for the successful businesses she closes each year. The admiration he receives on a regular basis is not normal.".