Meaning of cease in English

cease

verb [ I or T ]

formal

/siːs/ us

/siːs/

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to stop something:

Whether the protests will cease remains to be seen.

The company has decided to cease all UK operations after this year.

[ + to infinitive ] Workplace nurseries will cease to be liable for tax.

Thesaurus: synonyms, antonyms, and examples

to end something or cause it to end

stopStop pulling your brother's hair this instant!
quitQuit poking your sister, will you?
haltWe halted the assembly line to check the equipment.
discontinueThe lab has discontinued this line of research due to ethical concerns.
ceaseAll operations at the company will cease, and the assets will be auctioned off.

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More examplesFewer examples

We expect these practices to cease forthwith.
He claims that prejudice against homosexuals would cease overnight if all the gay stars in the country were honest about their sexuality.
This barbarity must cease!

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Causing something to end

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Idiom

cease and desist

cease

noun

formal

/siːs/ us

/siːs/

without cease

without stopping:

The bells started ringing at midday and continued, without cease, till sunrise.

(Definition of cease from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

cease | American Dictionary

cease

verb [ I/T ]

/sis/

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to stop an action or condition:

[ T ] Clapp had to cease publication because of lack of money.

[ + to infinitive ] It was hard to accept that one day he would simply cease to exist.

(Definition of cease from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of cease

cease

Finally, at the new steady state, investment ceases, capital, and, hence, output are reduced.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

In this way, the central claim of their paper - "all mental representations are conscious" - ceases to be vacuous.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

This ambivalence was reflected in the continuous violation of the cease-fire agreement by both parties.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Others re-visited once or twice in the first 3 months and then ceased visiting unless problems were thought likely to occur.

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As the study of developmental psychology devotes virtually no attention to the adult years, the assumption is that development has ceased by this time.

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When the voices cease and the steel guitar comes in, it is further still off-mic and features a slow vibrato.

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If a referent ceases to be mentioned in the text, however, its local salience is incrementally decreased.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

In four of these the relationship had ceased to exist by the time the pregnancy was discovered.

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If the female is separated from the male, gene expression is stopped and egg production ceases.

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Its proposition is that knowledge should cease to be seen as neutral, scientific and universal.

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This monotonicity ceases to hold for doubly-connected regions.

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By the end of the eighteenth century, mining ceased to be the force promoting economic growth.

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Salons ceased to be associated, as they had been at times during the eighteenth century, with the political and cultural avantgarde.

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The ratio at which responding ceases is termed the breakpoint, and is routinely used to compare the reinforcing efficacy of different drugs or drug doses.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Cultural assimilation has ceased to be acceptable to indigenous peoples in post-colonial societies.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

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