succeed

Everyday use settles into two fixed patterns. Succeed in takes a noun or an -ing form (succeeded in maintaining the track), and succeed at takes a place or activity (succeeded at university). A to-infinitive does not belong here, so write succeeded in repairing it, not succeeded to repair it.

Success without a named goal: the verb stands alone, as in the phrase voted most likely to succeed. It stretches to plants as well. The 1955 Soil Survey says alfalfa will not succeed where roots cannot reach deep enough, meaning it will not thrive. Where a specific aim is in view, the 'achieve a goal' meaning takes over.

Here the construction is the point: succeed to, followed by whatever passes on, such as the throne, a fortune or an estate. Compare taking over from a person, where the predecessor is the direct object: you succeed your father, but you succeed to his title. The Faculty of Advocates' digest of 1924 uses it in exactly this property sense, of an heir who succeeded to an entailed estate.

The crown is the possession at stake here, a narrowing of coming next in possession. When the throne is understood, the verb can stand alone. Bede's Ecclesiastical History reckons a reign from when a king "succeeded in February, 670." Read that phrase carefully: succeeded in usually signals achievement, but here in introduces only a date.

The plain core the other meanings share: Latin succedere covered going under, coming close, following, taking another's place and prospering all at once. Following in time is the simplest of these, as when autumn succeeds summer, and Thomas Browne could write in 1650 that destructive effects succeeded the curse. Because the 'achieve a goal' meaning grew from the same Latin verb, English uses one word for both.

A causative use, now gone, in which the subject makes someone else's effort prosper. Dryden's Virgil of 1697 has "Succeed my wish and second my design," and Stillingfleet in 1666 writes that God was pleased to succeed the citizens' endeavors. A modern reader hears any object after the verb as something followed or replaced. This use therefore survives only in older prose.

Here the inheritance itself is the subject: the estate succeeds to the heirs, rather than heirs succeeding to it as in coming next in possession. David P. Barash's Threats (2020) says a woman's estate "succeeded to her siblings, not to her husband." Devolve is the close synonym and follows the same pattern.

A slip between two verbs that sound almost alike: succeed is written where secede, meaning to withdraw from a union, alliance or organization, is meant. The telltale word is from. One secedes from a federation or a church, while the genuine senses of succeed take to or in. Treat this use as an error and write secede.