cease and desist
cease and desist verb: to stop and not resume an action.
Verb
cease and desist (third-person singular simple present ceases and desists, present participle ceasing and desisting, simple past and past participle ceased and desisted)
- To stop and not resume an action.
- We are told to cease and desist or we will cease to exist.
Noun
cease-and-desist
- A written demand that a party stops and does not resume a certain behavior, such as copyright infringement, slander, or libel, threatening legal action if the recipient fails to do so.
- She received a cease-and-desist from his solicitors soon after the podcast.
- An order by a government agency, sanctioned by a court, that one must stop and not resume a certain (usually illegal) behavior.
- His remarks did not stop the courts from issuing the cease-and-desist order.
Forms of cease and desist
| third-person singular present | ceases and desists |
|---|---|
| present participle | ceasing and desisting |
| past participle | ceased and desisted |
| past | ceased and desisted |
Origin of cease and desist
From cease (“stop”), and desist (“to not do again”). The noun sense can be viewed synchronically as an ellipsis of cease-and-desist order.
Questions about cease and desist
- What does cease and desist mean?
- Cease and desist means to stop and not resume an action.
- What part of speech is cease and desist?
- Cease and desist can be a verb or a noun.
- What is the past tense of cease and desist?
- The past tense of cease and desist is ceased and desisted.
Words near cease and desist in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: cease and desist (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “cease and desist.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cease_and_desist. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.