Cease

How to spell cease

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce cease

What does cease mean?

1. verbTo bring an activity to an end or stop happening.

Cease in a sentence

• The factory will cease production of the old model next month.

• The company ordered its staff to cease all contact with the supplier.

Where does cease come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin verb cessare, which meant 'to delay, hold back, or leave off'. That verb was a frequentative form of cedere, meaning 'to go away, withdraw, or yield', so the underlying image is of something giving way and coming to a halt. English picked it up in the early 1300s through the Old French cesser, keeping both the meaning and the soft opening sound. The same cedere root runs through a whole family of familiar words such as cede, concede, recede, and proceed, all of which carry a sense of moving or giving ground. Knowing that the silent final -e and the single s come straight from cessare can help you avoid the trap of writing it like its homophones 'seas' or 'sees'.

How the word is built

• ceas- (from Latin cessare: to stop, leave off)
• silent -e