Cease

//sis// name, noun, verb

name, noun, verb ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Cessation; extinction (see without cease). obsolete

    "the cease of majesty"

  2. 2
    (‘cease’ is a noun only in the phrase ‘without cease’) end wordnet
Verb
  1. 1
    To stop. formal, intransitive

    "And with that, his twitching ceased."

  2. 2
    have an end, in a temporal, spatial, or quantitative sense; either spatial or metaphorical wordnet
  3. 3
    To stop doing (something). formal, transitive

    "And with that, he ceased twitching."

  4. 4
    put an end to a state or an activity wordnet
  5. 5
    To be wanting; to fail; to pass away, perish. intransitive, obsolete

    "The poor shall never cease out of the land."

Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A surname from German.

Synonyms

All synonyms
discontinuediscontinuestopterminatebreak offend

Example

More examples

"You will soon cease to think of her."

Etymology

Etymology 1

From Middle English cesen, cessen, from Middle French cesser (“to cease”), from Latin cessō (“leave off”), frequentative of cēdō (“to leave off, go away”). Compare secede.

Etymology 2

Probably an Americanized form of German Zies.

Related phrases

cease and desistwithout ceasewonders never ceasepass away

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.