All 12 Uses of
cease
in
Moby Dick
- Whether any of the relatives of the seamen whose names appeared there were now among the congregation, I knew not; but so many are the unrecorded accidents in the fishery, and so plainly did several women present wear the countenance if not the trappings of some unceasing grief, that I feel sure that here before me were assembled those, in whose unhealing hearts the sight of those bleak tablets sympathetically caused the old wounds to bleed afresh.†
Chpt 7-9unceasing = not stopping or discontinuingstandard prefix: The prefix "un-" in unceasing means not and reverses the meaning of ceasing. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.
- Thus, the sperm whale and the humpbacked whale, each has a hump; but there the similitude ceases.†
Chpt 31-33 *ceases = stops or discontinues
- Then, this same humpbacked whale and the Greenland whale, each of these has baleen; but there again the similitude ceases.†
Chpt 31-33
- THEY CEASE DANCING, AND GATHER IN CLUSTERS†
Chpt 40-42cease = stop or discontinue
- all graze: unceasing touch and go!†
Chpt 40-42unceasing = not stopping or discontinuingstandard prefix: The prefix "un-" in unceasing means not and reverses the meaning of ceasing. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.
- A continual cascade played at the bows; a ceaseless whirling eddy in her wake; and, at the slightest motion from within, even but of a little finger, the vibrating, cracking craft canted over her spasmodic gunwale into the sea.†
Chpt 61-63ceaseless = never-endingstandard suffix: The suffix "-less" in ceaseless means without and reverses the meaning of cease. This is the same pattern you see in words like harmless, fearless, and powerless.
- the men at the windlass then cease heaving, and for a moment or two the prodigious blood-dripping mass sways to and fro as if let down from the sky, and every one present must take good heed to dodge it when it swings, else it may box his ears and pitch him headlong overboard.†
Chpt 67-69cease = stop or discontinue
- And the whale soon ceasing to sound, for some time they remained in that attitude, fearful of expending more line, though the position was a little ticklish.†
Chpt 79-81ceasing = stopping or discontinuing
- wherefore all these ceaseless toilings?†
Chpt 100-102ceaseless = never-endingstandard suffix: The suffix "-less" in ceaseless means without and reverses the meaning of cease. This is the same pattern you see in words like harmless, fearless, and powerless.
- Warmest climes but nurse the cruellest fangs: the tiger of Bengal crouches in spiced groves of ceaseless verdure.†
Chpt 118-120
- The javelins cease; open eyes; see, or not?†
Chpt 118-120cease = stop or discontinue
- Such an added, gliding strangeness began to invest the thin Fedallah now; such ceaseless shudderings shook him; that the men looked dubious at him; half uncertain, as it seemed, whether indeed he were a mortal substance, or else a tremulous shadow cast upon the deck by some unseen being's body.†
Chpt 130-132ceaseless = never-endingstandard suffix: The suffix "-less" in ceaseless means without and reverses the meaning of cease. This is the same pattern you see in words like harmless, fearless, and powerless.
Definitions:
-
(1)
(cease) to stop or discontinue
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
Note that the expression, cease fire means to stop doing battle such as firing funs at each other. Similarly, the noun, cease-fire, is a state of having stopped doing battle.