All 7 Uses of
cease
in
The Souls of Black Folk
- In the history of nearly all other races and peoples the doctrine preached at such crises has been that manly self-respect is worth more than lands and houses, and that a people who voluntarily surrender such respect, or cease striving for it, are not worth civilizing.†
Chpt 3 *cease = stop or discontinue
- And all this is gained only by human strife and longing; by ceaseless training and education; by founding Right on righteousness and Truth on the unhampered search for Truth; by founding the common school on the university, and the industrial school on the common school; and weaving thus a system, not a distortion, and bringing a birth, not an abortion.†
Chpt 5ceaseless = 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.
- Suppose we seek to remedy this by making them laborers and nothing more: they are not fools, they have tasted of the Tree of Life, and they will not cease to think, will not cease attempting to read the riddle of the world.†
Chpt 6cease = stop or discontinue
- Suppose we seek to remedy this by making them laborers and nothing more: they are not fools, they have tasted of the Tree of Life, and they will not cease to think, will not cease attempting to read the riddle of the world.†
Chpt 6
- And finally, when you fasten crime upon this race as its peculiar trait, they answer that slavery was the arch-crime, and lynching and lawlessness its twin abortions; that color and race are not crimes, and yet it is they which in this land receive most unceasing condemnation, North, East, South, and West.†
Chpt 6unceasing = 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.
- But the Brute said in his breast, "Till the mills I grind have ceased, The riches shall be dust of dust, dry ashes be the feast!†
Chpt 8ceased = stopped or discontinued
- Sleep, then, child,—sleep till I sleep and waken to a baby voice and the ceaseless patter of little feet—above the Veil.†
Chpt 11ceaseless = 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.