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
Multiple Sundial staff members quit in protest, while some circulated a petition calling for the publication to cease operations.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 22, 2026
With defenders following individual opponents, the free player can cease to exist altogether.
From BBC ● Oct. 17, 2026
He came obediently, wailing, that slow hoarse sound that ships make, that seems to begin before the sound itself has started, seems to cease before the sound itself has stopped.
From "The Sound and the Fury" by William Faulkner
Martínez Celaya added that he is particularly intrigued with the gray zone where “childhood ceases to be, and adulthood hasn’t come yet.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 2, 2026
But once competitors agree on what is “safe enough,” safety ceases to function as a competitive metric.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 16, 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
“Isn’t it mind-blowing, the engineering behind something as grand as this entryway? It never ceases to amaze me, but particularly on beautiful days like this,” Mr. Keller says.
From "The House That Lou Built" by Mae Respicio
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
The lawyer proposed a repayment plan, saying MCA funders might collect only a third of what was owed if Triways ceased operations.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 30, 2026
A spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence told reporters in August that Mojave’s work ceased because it had completed its contract.
From Salon ● Oct. 26, 2026
The man with the barrel-organ ceased playing for a moment and hobbled towards us, his cap in his hand.
From "Rebecca" by Daphne du Maurier
Today, after 31 years, we are saddened to announce that Salon is ceasing publication.
From Salon ● Nov. 5, 2026
CoinEx said it was ceasing operations less than three months after a Wall Street Journal article spotlighted its use in Iran.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 18, 2026
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
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
For he had become a Christian, some forty years earlier, without ceasing in the least to be a loyal Jew.
From "The Hiding Place" by Corrie ten Boom
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
