cease and desist

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Idioms and Phrases

Stop, leave off doing something, as in: “Bliss excavated at least once on his own and Dr. Brand ... told him to cease and desist” (Douglas Preston quoting Frank Hibben, The New Yorker , June 12, 1995). This legal term is a redundancy, since cease and desist mean virtually the same thing, but often appears in legal documents to avoid possible misinterpretation. [c. 1920]

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Example Sentences

It is a place where cease-and-desist letters are hung on the wall with pride.

From The Daily Beast

Cease-and-desist requests—whether formal legal orders or verbal rants—are hardly rare in politics.

From The Daily Beast

As a result, DeRose sent Jose a cease-and-desist order in September.

From The Daily Beast

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

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