When studying root words, there are often spelling variants to a primary root word. The root word ced: “go,” for instance, present in the words precede and recede, has variant spellings of cess and ceed, which also mean “go.”
Let’s begin with cess, “go.” When you access your money at a bank, you “go” towards it. When you have an excess of that money, it has “gone” out of normal boundaries. In a recession the economy is “going” back. The economy, during such a financial downturn, is not experiencing much success, or ‘going’ up to its goal of ‘going’ forward. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve often finds it a necessity, or something with which one is not able to “go,” to stimulate the economy. Hopefully your ancestors, or the ones who have “gone” before you, left you enough cash to help weather such economic trials!
Another spelling variant of the English root ced is ceed, which also means “go.” When you succeed at a task, you are able to “go” to the foot of it and accomplish it. When you proceed along a path, you “go” forth along it. And when you exceed the bounds of proper conduct? You “go” beyond them.
An easy way to remember that ced, cess, and ceed all mean to “go” is by using the following memory hook: An excess of Excedrin succeeds in headaches “going” away!
Now that you have succeeded in learning the variant spellings of the root word ced, you will confidently “go” towards vocabulary success!
- access: ‘going’ towards
- excess: ‘going’ out of normal limits
- recession: act of ‘going’ backwards
- success: ‘go’ up to a goal
- necessity: that with which one cannot ‘go’ without
- ancestor: one who has ‘gone’ before you
- succeed: ‘go’ to the foot of a goal
- proceed: ‘go’ forth
- exceed: ‘go’ out of normal boundaries