All 4 Uses of
cease
in
A Thousand Acres
- Pammy said nothing about Doreen Patrick, nor about anyone else, but she raked the area ceaselessly with her gaze, stopping and staring for a few seconds, then starting again.†
p. 94.9 *ceaselessly = in a manner that does not stopstandard suffix: The suffix "-less" in ceaselessly means without. This is the same pattern you see in words like fearless, homeless, and endless.
- Beneath this voice, flowing more sweetly, was the story: what he did and what I did and what he then did and what I did after that, seductive, dreamy, mostly wordless, renewing itself ceaselessly, then projecting itself into impossible futures that wore me out.†
p. 172.5
- LATER ON, WHEN I LOOKED BACK, what I remembered about that day was the morning, my fear that Rose sensed something between Jess and me, my argument with my father at dinner, the ceaseless thoughts of Jess Clark that were simultaneously bewitching and tedious, a kind of work that I could not stop performing.†
p. 177.1ceaseless = 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.
- I had been smiling ceaselessly since he came through the door.†
p. 201.6ceaselessly = in a manner that does not stopstandard suffix: The suffix "-less" in ceaselessly means without. This is the same pattern you see in words like fearless, homeless, and endless.
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.