Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use desist in a sentence

15 example sentences · verb

Desist means to cease to proceed or act; to stop (often with from). Example: “Please desist from telephoning me at this number.”

Examples of desist by meaning

verbTo cease to proceed or act; to stop (often with from).

  • Please desist from telephoning me at this number.
  • One Ear was uttering quick, eager whines, lunging at the length of his stick toward the darkness, and desisting now and again in order to make frantic attacks on the stick with his teeth.1906 May–October, Jack London, chapter I, in White Fang, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., published October...
  • Desist the kind of thinking that gets you into trouble.2005, Gerry Shishin Wick, The Book of Equanimity: Illuminating Classic Zen Koans, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 307

More sentences with desist

  • We are told to cease and desist or we will cease to exist.From the entry cease and desist
  • The boss gave him a warning that he would be fired if he did not desist from his behaviour.From the entry warning
  • I would like to politely request all blasterbaters to please cease and desist of their blasterbation.2024 July 5, Kendra Stanton Lee, “Blasterbating Needs to Stop. Turn Down For What? – Opinion”, in Newsweek, archived from the original on…. From the entry blasturbator
  • Truly a madcap slipslop, you do well to avoid and to desist from thought of return.1994, T Merton, R Lax, A Catch of Anti-letters. From the entry slipslop
  • He became noisy and violent, so I desisted from this aspect of his lesson.1927 September, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, “[Twelve Stories and a Dream.] The Truth about Pyecraft.”, in The Short Stories of H. G. Wells…. From the entry euphuism
  • Poda patti!" So the puppy, wisely, desisted.2008, Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things: A Novel. From the entry poda patti
  • Both the English antislavist Thomas Clarkson and the French antislavist Abbé Henri Grégoire, to whom he had revealed his plans to return, advised him strongly to desist.2014, Shelby T. McCloy, The Negro in the French West Indies, page 74. From the entry antislavist
  • Our Human Rights Town Hall calls out Islamic supremacist groups in America to cease and desist their subversive activity under the guise of 'civil rights' or Shariaphobia.2012, "jwshe", AFDI/SIOA, FMU to Host "Summer Night for Human Rights" in Defense of Iranian Pastor Sentenced to Death for Leaving Islam…. From the entry Shariaphobia
  • For half an hour they called to him to return, but as he did not answer them they at last desisted, and sought the sleeping-mats within their huts.1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 127. From the entry sleeping mat
  • A distracted mother having answered a half a hundred queries in half an hour, at last implored her bright little eight-year-old to desist for a while.1911 November 5, “Those Fool Questions—and Some Fool Retorts […]”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company…. From the entry motherkins
  • With his departure, Alfonso VIII was free to vent his wrath on the Leónese who were themselves under immense pressure from the papacy to desist from attacking their Christian neighbours.2013, Nicholas Morton, “The struggle for Spain, 1195–1232”, in The Medieval Military Orders, 1120–1314, Abingdon, Oxfordshire; New York…. From the entry Leónese
  • She gathered many of the stones which I built into the walls of the hut; also, she turned a deaf ear to my entreaties when I begged her to desist.1904, Jack London, chapter 30, in The Sea-Wolf (Macmillan’s Standard Library), New York, N.Y.: Grosset & Dunlap, →OCLC. From the entry entreaty

Meaning of desist

  1. verb To cease to proceed or act; to stop (often with from).

Full definition of desist

Questions about desist in a sentence

How do you use desist in a sentence?
Desist is used as a verb. For example: “Please desist from telephoning me at this number.”
What is a short sentence with desist?
“Poda patti!" So the puppy, wisely, desisted.”
What does desist mean?
Desist means to cease to proceed or act; to stop (often with from).

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: desist (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use desist in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/desist. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.