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cease

"Cease to exist" is a popular use of the word cease, or end, and you may have closed your eyes and wished that someone — the boogeyman in the dark or a pesky sibling by day — would stop! Go away! Cease to be! Or, at the very least — quit bugging you.

A French word from 1300, cesser, meaning "come to an end," "go away," "give up," and "yield" is the root of cease. 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.

DEFINITIONS OF: cease

v put an end to a state or an activity

Synonyms:: discontinue, give up, lay off, quit, stop

Antonyms:: bear on, carry on, continue, preserve, uphold
keep or maintain in unaltered condition; cause to remain or last; continue, go forward, proceed
move ahead; travel onward in time or space; continue, go along, go on, keep, proceed
continue a certain state, condition, or activity; show more antonyms...

Types:: show 11 types...; hide 11 types...; drop, knock off
stop pursuing or acting; leave off
stop using; sign off
cease broadcasting; get off the air; as of radio stations; retire, withdraw
withdraw from active participation; pull the plug
prevent from happening or continuing; close off, shut off
stem the flow of; cheese
used in the imperative (get away, or stop it); call it a day, call it quits
stop doing what one is doing; break
give up; nol.pros., nolle pros, nolle prosequi
drop prosecution of by entering a nolle prosequi in the court records; drop out
withdraw from established society, especially because of disillusion with conventional values

v have an end, in a temporal, spatial, or quantitative sense; either spatial or metaphorical

Synonyms:: end, finish, stop, terminate

Antonyms:: begin, start
have a beginning, in a temporal, spatial, or evaluative sense; begin, start
have a beginning characterized in some specified way; begin
have a beginning, of a temporal event; show more antonyms...

Types:: show 23 types...; hide 23 types...; pass away
go out of existence; lapse
end, at least for a long time; cut out
cease operating; go out
become extinguished; adjourn, break up, recess
close at the end of a session; disappear, vanish
cease to exist; climax, culminate
end, especially to reach a final or climactic stage; run out
become used up; be exhausted; go, run low, run short
to be spent or finished; disappear, go away, vanish
become invisible or unnoticeable; close, conclude
come to a close; come out, turn out
result or end; discontinue
come to or be at an end; break
come to an end; dematerialise, dematerialize
become immaterial; disappear; crown, top
be the culminating event; clear
go away or disappear; bob under
disappear suddenly, as if under the surface of a body of water; eventuate
come out in the end; work out
happen in a certain way, leading to, producing, or resulting in a certain outcome, often well; fizzle, fizzle out, peter out, taper off
end weakly; leave off
come to an end, stop or cease; expire, run out
lose validity

n (`cease' is a noun only in the phrase `without cease') end

Type of:: end, ending
the point in time at which something ends

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