cease
Americanverb (used without object)
-
ceases,
present (3rd person singular)
-
ceased,
past participle, past
-
ceasing
present participle
verb (used with object)
-
ceases,
present (3rd person singular)
-
ceased,
past participle, past
-
ceasing
present participle
noun
idioms
verb
noun
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
ceasesimple
-
ceasessimple
-
have ceasedperfect
-
has ceasedperfect
-
am ceasingprogressive
-
are ceasingprogressive
-
is ceasingprogressive
-
have been ceasingperfect progressive
-
has been ceasingperfect progressive
Past
-
ceasedsimple
-
had ceasedperfect
-
was ceasingprogressive
-
were ceasingprogressive
-
had been ceasingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of cease
First recorded in 1250–1300; Middle English ces(s)en, from Old French cesser, from Latin cessāre “to leave off,” equivalent to cess(us) (past participle of cēdere “to withdraw, go”; see cede
Explanation
To cease is to stop or end. Your gym teacher may have trained the class so well that all chattering will cease every time she blows her whistle. Cease comes from the Old French cesser, which means "come to an end," "go away," "give up," or "yield." Although cease often appears in the past tense with "-ed," cease is common for talking about things as they come to an end. A dead plant has ceased living, and if you cease watering the rest of the plants, they will cease to exist too.
Vocabulary lists containing cease
"Romeo and Juliet" by William Shakespeare, Act II
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Christmas Carol Vocab: A Lyrical Lexicon
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Unit 1: Telling Details
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Sanrio said it had "decided to cease this collaboration, as well as all subsequent projects and promotional campaigns".
From Barron's ● Oct. 29, 2026
It’s a film that knows yearning doesn’t cease no matter how long we live, and that it’s all too easy to let fear complicate what should be easy.
From Salon ● Oct. 26, 2026
With defenders following individual opponents, the free player can cease to exist altogether.
From BBC ● Oct. 17, 2026
“We simply ask that the court of public opinion cease to make any assumptions about any person involved until more information is publicly available.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 2, 2026
The raincoat felt damp still, from the day before, but that would soon cease to matter.
From "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath
This jackpot portrayal of working motherhood never ceases to be a thrill for me.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 5, 2026
Dostoevsky follows the narrator over four nights and a morning during which he ceases living in his imagination and embraces reality for the first time.
From Barron's ● Sep. 4, 2026
Researchers refer to this phenomenon as Goodhart’s law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
From Slate ● Aug. 11, 2026
Every assignment, he explains, ceases to be an individual endeavor.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 10, 2026
The Commander opens his eyes, notices, frowns, ceases to notice.
From "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood
The test of a work of satire is whether its comic force remains after its immediate subject has ceased to be relevant.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 13, 2026
It meant that the internal measure of time ceased advancing when the relevant changes in the system disappeared.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 30, 2026
“The outflows ceased when we paused withdrawal service earlier. We are still working with partners to freeze many of the impacted assets, and have frozen around $3 billion thus far,” it said.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 30, 2026
Now, it has ceased operations to make way for development.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 27, 2026
I stopped: the sound ceased, only for an instant; it began again, louder: for at first, though distinct, it was very low.
From "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë
Ferguson’s Law states that “any great power that spends more on debt servicing than on defense risks ceasing to be a great power.”
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 25, 2026
Given all that, I was somewhat surprised to see heartfelt eulogies for the mail-order racket when Columbia House announced it was ceasing operations later this year.
From Salon ● Aug. 21, 2026
Closing these institutions means students are slowly ceasing to overpay for scant added value.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 6, 2026
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, told reporters Thursday that the talks starting would be “contingent” upon hostilities ceasing in Lebanon.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 9, 2026
The ponderous counterspectacle of things ceasing to be.
From "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
