Succumb

How to spell succumb

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce succumb

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does succumb mean?

1. verbTo stop resisting and give way to a force, pressure, illness, or temptation.

Succumb in a sentence

• After weeks of pressure from management, he began to succumb to their demands.

• He tried not to succumb to the temptation of a second dessert.

Where does succumb come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin succumbere, meaning 'to lie down under' or 'to sink down beneath' something. It was built from the prefix sub-, meaning 'under', which assimilated to suc- before the c, and the verb cumbere, 'to lie down', a relative of cubare, 'to recline'. The literal image is of being pressed down and lying flat under a weight, which slid naturally into the modern sense of yielding to a force, an illness, or a temptation. English took the word up in the fifteenth century, originally in the sense of bringing something low, before settling into the intransitive 'to give way' we use today. The silent final b, which never gets pronounced, is the classic spelling trap: it echoes the Latin cumbere and quietly mirrors the same hidden b that surfaces in relatives like 'recumbent' and 'incumbent'.

How the word is built

• suc- (from sub-: under)
• cumb (from Latin cumbere: to lie down)