Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To take the place of; replace.
- v. To cause to be set aside, especially to displace as inferior or antiquated. See Synonyms at replace.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To make void, inefficacious, or useless by superior power, or by coming in the place of; set aside; render unnecessary; suspend; stay.
- To be placed in or take the room of; displace; supplant; replace: as, an officer superseded by another.
Wiktionary
- v. transitive Set (something) aside.
- v. transitive Take the place of.
- v. transitive Displace in favour of another.
- n. Internet An updated newsgroup post that supersedes an earlier version.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To come, or be placed, in the room of; to replace.
- v. To displace, or set aside, and put another in place of.
- v. To make void, inefficacious, or useless, by superior power, or by coming in the place of; to set aside; to render unnecessary; to suspend; to stay.
- v. (Old Law) To omit; to forbear.
WordNet 3.0
- v. take the place or move into the position of
Etymologies
- From Middle French superseder ("postpone, defer"), from Latin supersedere, from super ("over") + sedere ("to sit"). The meaning “to replace” is from 1642, probably by association with unrelated precede – note that ‘c’ instead of ‘s’ (from cedere ("to go"), not sedere ("to sit")). As a result, supercede is a common misspelling – see therein for further discussion. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English superceden, to postpone, from Old French superceder, from Latin supersedēre, to refrain from : super-, super- + sedēre, to sit; see sed- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Since when does the Greek origin of the word supersede the English meaning?”
“These terms supersede all prior agreements and (together with the Privacy Policy) are complete and exclusive.”
“I know Rich doesn't understand the word "supersede" but that doesn't mean anything to me.”
“People who can spell "supersede" correctly are few and far between.”
“Or you could keep the sense of the word in context, giving up on the basic-vocabulary aspect; you could, for instance, render it "supersede," which I think conveys the meaning well enough.”
“The word "supersede," however, continued to cause offense.”
“The dissent will "supersede" the preliminary paper that came out last month, Hennessey said on his blog.”
“President Pratibha Patil this morning gave her assent to an ordinance pencilled by the Union health ministry to "supersede" the existing council and establish a new board of governors, a senior government official said”
“Congress Waxman told Bloomberg TV at the weekend that draft legislation being debated this week by a panel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee would "supersede" EPA regulation.”
“By creating historical and social linkage through this sacrificial ritual, circumcision functions to supersede and transcend our most primary maternal and biological system of relationship making patrilineal and patriarchal hierarchy appear "natural and inevitable," as Nancy Jay notes in her brilliant book, Throughout Your Generations Forever.”
The Huffington Post: Miriam Pollack: Circumcision: Identity, Gender And Power
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘supersede’.
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GRE Barron's 800
abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abject, abjure, abscission, abscond, abstemious, abstinence, abysmal, accretion and 787 more...
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GRE 2014
abate, abdicate, abase, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
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SAT Words
But only the ones that I don't already know.
abase, abash, abominate, abstruse, acclivity, accolade, accost, adroit, adulate, adulterate, adumbrate, affray and 241 more...
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Words build meanings from origins( et...
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 2053 more...
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Gesundheit
Words that sound like sneezes
zucchini, zoology, wysiwyg, woodchuck, withhold, wichita, vacuum, twelfth, syzygy, synchronous, swatch, supersede and 120 more...
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EU Buzz - Lisbon Treaty
All words of the Lisbon Treaty
(Persons' names, foreign and grammatical words have been eliminated, MWEs have been split up into individual words. Capitalization has been retained if r...health, follow, condition, meeting, minister, beginning, chapter, information, language, remain, covered, respect and 2614 more...
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fancy essay words
hiatus, ontology, exegesis, hermeneutics, dialectics, demiurge, ascertain, contention, eschatological, synecdoche, centripetal, centrifugal and 96 more...
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GRE
predilection, explicit, appeal, supplication, appealing, enchanting, ovation, pertinent, apropos, opportunely, applicable, germane and 381 more...
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Philosophic , etymology
every major discipline has uniquely developed esoteric nomenclature to facilitate interdisciplinary dissemination
quale , qualia, elegy, tacet, lexicon, annunciate, caste, eros, contrive, purlicue, irony, venacular, dilapidate and 569 more...
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Words I Misspell
There are words suffering from a butcher.
prioprietary, definitely, a lot, bellwether, committed, daiquiri, existence, gauge, guard, guarantee, harass, lightning and 7 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
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SAT Words
But only the ones that I don't already know.
abase, abash, abominate, abstruse, acclivity, accolade, accost, adroit, adulate, adulterate, adumbrate, affray and 241 more...
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amagnano's Words
truculent, churlish, antipathy, sociopathy, loquacious, disheveled, pouilly-fuisse, enamored, marked, assuage, ascetic, pagan and 190 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, S
scrunch, solace, sabotage, saccade, sacerdotal, sacrilegious, sacristy, snappy, skew, steadfast, scowl, scorch and 781 more...
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Words
My list of words.
veritable, facetious, nadir, quixotic, apropos, acquiesce, ostensible, insipid, egregious, inveterate, coax, adroit and 409 more...
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Out of Book Words
commiserate, equanimity, dulcet, cursory, diffident, profligate, egregious, precocious, dissemble, aggregate, efficacy, ingenuous and 100 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for supersede.
sarra I hope your intention is that supercede is the misspelling!
There's some brief exploration of the etymology and the reasons for the s/c muddiness here. Apr 23, 2008
jaltcoh This is probably the word most frequently misspelled (by educated people) that would inevitably be caught by running a spellcheck. Apr 23, 2008