ceasing

Pluralceasings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of cease.

   The sudden ceasing of the engine alarmed the pilot.

   She read for hours, ceasing only when the light faded.

   Note

   A formal word in its -ing shape. Everyday English usually says stopping instead. Like cease, it works with or without an object: the rain ceasing at dawn, or ceasing all payments. An older use, now obsolete, meant failing or perishing outright. As a gerund it shades into the countable noun, and the line between them is crossed once a plural becomes possible.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   An act of stopping or coming to an end; a cessation.

   The ceasing of hostilities allowed aid to reach the city.

   A brief ceasing of the storm gave them time to escape.

   Similarcessation, end, halt, stop

   Oppositecontinuation, resumption

   Note

   Here the word becomes a true noun that can be counted, with ceasings as its plural. It is at home in contemplative prose that pairs it with arising. Ledi Sayadaw's The Manual of Insight and the Noble Eightfold Path and Its Factors (2017) speaks of "the changes, arisings, and ceasings of the derivative material qualities." Set beside arising, it names one half of a recurring cycle rather than a final stop.

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