Verbs

“Supercede”

Common English Blunders, Misspellings, Verbs

I occasionally see “supercede” when the writer means something else.

Problem:
“Supercede” is a misspelled word.

Explanation:
“Supercede” is a misspelling of “supersede” and reflects the combination of the influence of other words (e.g., “intercede”) and an ignorance about the roots of words.

The verb “supersede” literally means to sit upon or above — from “super” (from the Latin “super”: upon or above) and “sede” (from the Latin “sedére”: to sit).

In contrast, the “cede” in verbs such as “concede” comes from the Latin “cédere”: to go or yield.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following words and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

  • supersede — 2,780,000 matches
  • supercede — 838,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have written the word correctly vs. incorrectly by a ratio of 3.32:1, which is pitiful.

I recall a software manufacturer once naming its product “Supercede” and wondering whether the maker intentionally misspelled “supersede” in order to create a unique name or unintentionally misspelled the verb out of ignorance.

In any case, I found it disheartening that the maker would use a common misspelling as its product’s brand name.

Solution:
“Supersede”

“Superceed”

Misspellings, Verbs

I occasionally see “superceed” when the writer means something else.

Problem:
“Superceed” is a misspelled word.

Explanation:
“Superceed” is a misspelling of “supersede” and reflects the combination of the influence of other words (e.g., “succeed”) and an ignorance about the roots of words.

The verb “supersede” literally means to sit upon or above — from “super” (from the Latin “super”: upon or above) and “sede” (from the Latin “sedére”: to sit).

In contrast, the “ceed” in verbs such as “succeed” comes from the Latin “cédere”: to go.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following words and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

  • supersede — 2,780,000 matches
  • superceed — 19,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have written the word correctly vs. incorrectly by a ratio of more than 146:1, which is satisfying to see.

If one can remember that “supersede” literally means to sit above, then one can use the mnemonic trick that there is an ‘s’ in both “sede” and “sit”.

Solution:
“Supersede”

“We need to accelerate this pace.”

Common English Blunders, Verbs

I heard this during an audio broadcast about a company’s first-quarter results.

Problem:
The word “accelerate” is the wrong verb for this sentence.

Explanation:
Putting aside for this blog post the problematic misuse of “need” (a throwback to the pop-psychology movement of the 1960s), “accelerated” is problematic here and most probably is not what was intended.

I heard “We need to accelerate this pace.” from a group president talking about the growth in the number of subscribers to his company’s services.

The verb “accelerate” means to increase the speed of. One of the meanings of the noun “pace” is the rate of growth.

We get “We need to increase the speed of the rate of growth.” when we apply these meanings to the statement.

The “speed of the rate” is nonsensical.

What the speaker was trying to say, as he revealed in subsequent statements, was that he wanted his company to increase the growth rate, not “increase the speed of the rate of growth”.

I suspect that he made this common English blunder because he wanted to sound more sophisticated — using a four-syllable word instead of a two-syllable word.

Solution:
“We need to increase this pace.”