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
Chris Waugh, New York Times, 13 Apr. 2025
What if this character’s eventual fate is not to hold on to her power, but to cede it to another?
—Proma Khosla, IndieWire, 12 Apr. 2025
So the administration is rushing to work out how to build leverage against Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is in no mood to cede to Trump’s bullying.
—Stephen Collinson, CNN Money, 11 Apr. 2025
The other way is to cede nothing but go out and beat them fair and square.
—The Editors, National Review, 4 Apr. 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 18 Apr. 2025.
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cede
verb
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