Superseer (Spanish for, “to discontinue; cease”) comes from the Latin supersedere which is a combination of the prefix super- (“above”) and sedere (“to sit”). When you stop doing something — you’re now, literally, sitting on top of it. At least in Spanish.
From the Latin sedere root, we get various English words related to sitting, including:
- Sedate — when you’re on a sedative, you’re just sitting around!
- Assiduous — this originally meant “constantly sitting down”, but came to mean, “very busy” (since you sit down when you work) and thus the busy people are the assiduous ones!
- Obsess — with the ob- prefix (“against”), it’s literally, “someone sitting opposite you” — which is what you do when you’re obsessing over someone, watching their every move closely.
- Supersede — literally, “to sit on top of” — very similar to, “going over their heads!
- Sedentary — the lifestyle of sitting down. Sounds familiar!
- Siege — you sit in your castle when it’s under siege!
- Reside — what do you do in your residence if not, sit around?
From the same Latin root sedere we also get the Spanish… asiento, the common word for, seat. Now that makes sense, doesn’t it?
The s-n-t/d root is visible in most of these words. Note that in superseer, the middle -n- disappeared: hence the -e- on both sides!
