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Monday September 06, 2010

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surcease [SUR-sees; sur-SEES]

noun

1. Cessation; stop; end.

• Now, before you say, "In my day we walked through snow drifts as big as elephants just to get to school, and we took classes without surcease from dawn till dusk," let me be clear: These teenagers wanted to keep taking six courses.
  Scot Lehigh, "Students sacrificing for education", Boston Globe, May 1, 2009
• Being president in a compressed, globalized world is like running an urban emergency room, he explains. "Things are unraveling; things are coming at you all the time. There is no surcease."
  Abigail Trafford, "Too Old for Constant Crises?", The Washington Post, Oct 21, 2008
• At length came, as will come eventually in the case of every healthy man persisting in self-denial, surcease of much sorrow over tobacco, but in the interval George Henry had a residence in purgatory, rent free.
  Stanley Waterloo (1846 - 1913) The Wolf's Long Howl (1899)

Origin of the Word

Surcease, approximately 1425, derives from Anglo-French surseser, from Old French sursis, past participle of surseoir "to refrain, delay," from Latin supersedere from super , "above" + sedere , "to sit."