CHAPTER 33

Using cede, sede, ceed, seed

Although there is only a small handful of commonly used English words that use one of these endings,

despite their small numbers, they can cause a great deal of irritation. This takes a little explanation.
Supersede comes from the Latin sedere, meaning “to sit,” whereas most of the other words come from
ceder, “to go ahead.” Unfortunately, over the centuries, the spelling has gotten slightly mixed so that we
now have some words spelled with ee.

Spelling rule #1: The spelling seed is only used for seed, including its compounds and derivatives:

(^) Spelling rule #2: Almost all the other words use cede (from ceder):
(^) Spelling rule #3: There are two other possible endings, eed and ede:
(^) Note that supersede is the only commonly used word in the English language to use sede.
When the long e sound is changed to a short e sound, it will be spelled with only one e—succeed,
success, intercede, intercession. One curiosity is proceed, which loses the double e when it becomes
procedure but retains the long e sound.
The word emceed is the past tense of emcee, which is formed from an acronym (MC, Master of
Ceremonies) and is so new that some writers prefer not to use it.