Other forms: conceded, conceding, concedes
To concede is to admit the other side has the point — not because you want to, but because you have run out of argument. You concede that the bill was overdue. A candidate concedes at two in the morning, phones the winner, and goes home.
Concede is grudging by nature: whatever you hand over, you hand over under pressure. A team concedes a goal, which means it lets one in. A government concedes ground, then land, then defeat. Keep it away from ordinary agreement — you agree with a friend about a film, you do not concede it. The noun is concession, and the pattern to learn is concede that followed by a whole clause: he conceded that the figures were wrong.
1verbconcedeTo accept that something is true, or that the other side is right, when you would rather not.~25%
“He conceded that the plan had been rushed.”
synonyms: grant, acknowledge
2verbopponentTo let an opponent have something — a point, a goal, a piece of ground.~50%
“United conceded twice in the last ten minutes.”
3verbpubliclyTo accept publicly that you have lost an election or a contest.~25%
“She conceded before the final votes were counted.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 89 sentences found in the wild and placed 87 of them on a sense (2 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Also accepted in games: admit
conCEDE → a SEED
Your brother looks at the board a long time, tips his king over with one finger, and sets a single black seed on the empty square where it stood. The game is yours.
hooks ontoseed
Latin concēdō is to give way: con-, wholly, plus cēdō, to yield, to go. The same cēdō is sitting inside proceed, which is to go forward, and recede, which is to go back. To concede is to go over to the other side entirely.
Proto-Indo-European
*ked- — to go, yield
Latin
concēdō — give way, yield
Old French
conceder
English, today
concede
Built from
From Middle English, from Old French conceder, from Latin concēdō (“give way, yield”), from con- (“wholly”) + cēdō (“to yield, give way, to go, grant”), from Proto-Indo-European ked- (“to go, yield”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA