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cess

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• IPA^(key): /sɛs/
• Rhymes: -ɛs

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

Uncertain. Occurs in print at least as early as 1831, when Samuel Lover used the expression as one already long-established. He unambiguously stated the derivation of cess in the malediction bad cess to be an abbreviation of success.^[1] OED speculated that it either was from success or from assessment meaning a military or governmental exaction.^[2]

The writings of Edmund Spenser, published 1633, point to a borrowing from Irish cís (“tax, tribute, cess, rent”)^[3] from Latin census^[4].

cess (plural cesses)

1. (British, Ireland) An assessed tax, duty, or levy; billeting.
   • 1595-1596, Edmund Spenser, A View of the State of Ireland as it was in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth‎^[1]:

     EUDOX[US] But what is that which you call Cess? it is a Word sure unused amongst us here; therefore (I pray you) expound the same. IREN[EUS] Cess is none other than that which you yourself called Imposition, but is in a kind unacquainted perhaps unto you; for there are Cesses of sundry sorts: one is the Cessing of Soldiers upon the Countrey; [...] Another kind of Cess is, the imposing of Provisions for the Governours Housekeeping, [...]

   • 1967, G. R. Madan, Indian Social Problems, volume 2, →ISBN, page 225:

     The act provides for a levy of a cess on all coal and coke despatched from collieries in India, at such rate, not less than twenty-five paise and not more than fifty paise per ton, as may be fixed by the Central Government.

   • 2006, The Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974, Georg Thieme Verlag, page 76:

     Therefore it was proposed to levy a cess on local authorities which are entrusted with the duty of supplying water under the law by or under which they are constituted and on certain specified industries.

2. (British, Ireland, informal) Usually preceded by good or (more commonly) bad: luck or success.
   • 1852 November, O’Hara Family, “Clough Fionn; or, The Stone of Destiny”, in The Dublin University Magazine, a Literary and Political Journal, volume XL, number CCXXXIX, Dublin: James McGlashan, […]; London: W[illia]m S[omerville] Orr and Company, →OCLC, chapter XI, page 557:

     "Bad cess may attend you, where are you scampering to, you rambunctious"—but she could go no farther; the tears burst from her, and she gave way, without farther resistance, to an explosion of grief.

   • 1962, News for Farmer Cooperatives‎^[2], Information Office, Farm Credit Administration:

     Midland has had good cess with using minute commercials eight television stations, cited as one example of modernizing its advertising.

   • 1965, Canada Month‎^[3]:

     It is good cess to feel the warmth and sincerity of this couple who fill the role of the Queen's representative in Canada.

   • 2004, Kevin O'Malley, Inside, →ISBN, page 37:

     Bad cess to it, b'ys! Where's the blessed ting, at all, at all? Bad cess to it!

3. (obsolete) Bound; measure.
   • c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i]:

     The poor jade is wrung in the withers out of all cess.

cess (third-person singular simple present cesses, present participle cessing, simple past and past participle cessed)

1. (British, Ireland) To levy a cess.
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, A View of the Present State of Irelande‎^[4]:

     ...according to the quantity thereof, we may cess the said rent and allowance issuing thereout.

• cease
• cessation

Possibly from an archaic dialect word meaning “bog”. According to the OED, from earlier suspiral (“water pipe, setting tank”).^[5]

cess (plural cesses)

1. (rail transport) The area along either side of a railroad track which is kept at a lower level than the sleeper bottom, in order to provide drainage.
   • 2022 August 10, Dr Mike Esbester, “New understandings from old incidents”, in RAIL, number 963, page 58:

     In April 1923, he was working with a gang of five others in Glasgow on the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS). They were told to walk in the cess. But as it wasn't clear, they walked on the sleepers, each carrying a 70lb lifting screw on his shoulder. McGuinness was struck by a train and killed for want of a safe path.

2. (obsolete, dialect) A bog, in particular a peat bog.
3. (obsolete, dialect) A piece of peat, or a turf, particularly when dried for use as fuel.

• cess path
• cess heave

• cesspool
• cesspit

From French cesser. See cease.

cess (third-person singular simple present cesses, present participle cessing, simple past and past participle cessed)

1. (obsolete, law) To cease; to neglect.
   • 1827, John Perkins, A Profitable Book, Treating of the Laws of England‎^[5]:

     And therefore, if there be lord, mesne, and tenant, and the tenant doth cess, and the mesne takes a wife and dies, his wife shall not have dower of the tenancy...

• CSEs, ECSS, ESCs, secs, secs.

• Cess (alternative capitalization)

cess m (definite singular cessen, indefinite plural cessar, definite plural cessane)

1. (music) C-flat

• cess-dur m

cess n

1. C-flat

• ciss