SUCCUMB

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does succumb mean? 

• SUCCUMB (verb)
  The verb SUCCUMB has 2 senses:

1. consent reluctantly

2. be fatally overwhelmed

  Familiarity information: SUCCUMB used as a verb is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SUCCUMB (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they succumb    ... he / she / it succumbs   
Past simple: succumbed   
Past participle: succumbed   
-ing form: succumbing   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Consent reluctantly

Classified under:

Verbs of telling, asking, ordering, singing

Synonyms:

buckle under; give in; knuckle under; succumb; yield

Hypernyms (to "succumb" is one way to...):

accept; consent; go for (give an affirmative reply to; respond favorably to)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "succumb"):

accede; bow; defer; give in; submit (yield to another's wish or opinion)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s
Somebody ----s to somebody

Sense 2

Meaning:

Be fatally overwhelmed

Classified under:

Verbs of being, having, spatial relations

Synonyms:

succumb; yield

Hypernyms (to "succumb" is one way to...):

buy the farm; cash in one's chips; choke; conk; croak; decease; die; drop dead; exit; expire; give-up the ghost; go; kick the bucket; pass; pass away; perish; pop off; snuff it (pass from physical life and lose all bodily attributes and functions necessary to sustain life)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s
Somebody ----s PP

Antonym:

survive (continue in existence after (an adversity, etc.))

 Context examples 

The look was far worse to resist than the frantic strain: only an idiot, however, would have succumbed now.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

The untreated control macaque developed Ebola virus disease and succumbed to the virus, but the treated animals survived and remained free of Ebola symptoms.

(Experimental Ebola antibody protects monkeys, NIH)

A research team led by biologists at Tufts University has found two genes that may allow some insect species to survive climate change by adjusting their biological annual clocks, while others succumb.

(Secrets to climate change adaptation uncovered in the European corn borer moth, National Science Foundation)

John Messner seemed succumbing to the apathy of it all.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

I had succumbed and slept where I sat in the stern-sheets.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Even my old man succumbed and did not contradict her, but gave me double share instead.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

I have more than once observed that in my second character, my faculties seemed sharpened to a point and my spirits more tensely elastic; thus it came about that, where Jekyll perhaps might have succumbed, Hyde rose to the importance of the moment.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

His wet clothing showed that he had been out in the storm of the night before, and his stick, which was a Penang-lawyer weighted with lead, was just such a weapon as might, by repeated blows, have inflicted the terrible injuries to which the trainer had succumbed.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

This challenges the conventional belief that girls are born with all the ova they will ever have and the numbers can only go down as the cells are either used up by the reproductive cycle or succumb to damage or natural aging.

(Chemotherapy cocktail may cause adult women to grow new egg cells, Wikinews)