cease and desist

Stop, leave off doing something, as in: “Bliss excavated at least once on his own and Dr. Brand ... told him to cease and desist” (Douglas Preston quoting Frank Hibben, The New Yorker, June 12, 1995). This legal term is a redundancy, since cease and desist mean virtually the same thing, but often appears in legal documents to avoid possible misinterpretation. [c. 1920]

The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

Examples from the Web for cease and desist

Contemporary Examples of cease and desist

It is a place where cease-and-desist letters are hung on the wall with pride.
New York Post Looks Thinner After News Corporation Split
David Freedlander
July 18, 2013
Cease-and-desist requests—whether formal legal orders or verbal rants—are hardly rare in politics.
The Long, Strange U-Turn of Twisted Sister’s ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’
Kevin Fallon
August 24, 2012
As a result, DeRose sent Jose a cease-and-desist order in September.
Paul Babeu, Immigration Hawk Sheriff, Outed by Alleged Mexican Gay Lover
Terry Greene Sterling
February 18, 2012