Did you know?
Do you cede or seed control?
Cede means "to yield or grant typically by treaty." Most of the verb senses of seed are concerned with planting seeds (either literal, as of plants, or figuratively, as of ideas). However, the word may also be used to mean "to schedule (tournament players or teams) so that superior ones will not meet in early rounds." If you relinquish or yield something you are ceding it, and if you are organizing the participants in a tournament you are seeding them.
Did you know?
Cede is often a formal term used in discussing territory and rights, but is also used less formally. So, for example, Spain ceded Puerto Rico to the U.S. in 1898, following the Spanish-American War, and the U.S. ceded control of the Panama Canal to Panama in 1999. Critics warn that we are ceding leadership in alternative-energy technology to China. Citizens of one European country or another are always worrying that their own country is ceding too much power to the European Union. A tennis player doesn't have any choice when she cedes her no. 1 ranking to a rival.
Examples of cede in a Sentence
Tom Sanderson, Forbes.com, 21 May 2025
Russia has demanded Ukraine recognize the regions as Russian in order to halt the conflict, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has refused to cede territory to Russia to bring an end to the war.
—Isabel Van Brugen, MSNBC Newsweek, 19 May 2025
Leclerc needed to cede the place to Albon, but at the same time, his complaint about the amount of rules-lawyering that now accompanies every bit of wheel-to-wheel action is getting a bit tedious.
—ArsTechnica, 19 May 2025
World cinema’s premier showcase must also serve local interests, of course — with that first slot now firmly ceded to hometown distributors.
—Ben Croll, IndieWire, 13 May 2025
See All Example Sentences for cede
Cite this Entry
“Cede.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cede. Accessed 29 May. 2025.
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cede
verb
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