Secession

How to spell secession

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce secession

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does secession mean?

1. nounThe formal act of withdrawing from a political union, federation, or organisation.

Secession in a sentence

• The region voted on secession from the central government.

• Historians still debate the causes of southern secession in 1861.

Where does secession come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Secession comes from the Latin secessio, a noun meaning 'a withdrawal' or 'a going apart'. That word was built on the verb secedere, formed from se-, meaning 'apart' or 'aside', and cedere, meaning 'to go' or 'to yield'. In ancient Rome the secessio plebis described the dramatic occasions when ordinary citizens literally walked out of the city to press their demands, so the original sense was very physical: people removing themselves from a community. English adopted the word in the early 1600s, and it later became closely tied to political history, above all the withdrawal of southern states from the United States in 1860 and 1861. The cedere root still surfaces in close relatives such as 'proceed', 'recede', and 'concede', and remembering that shared 'cess' spelling helps explain why secession carries a double s, one from se- meeting cess and one within the cluster.

How the word is built

• se- (apart, away)
• cess (from cedere: to go, withdraw)
• -ion (noun suffix)