desist

to completely stop doing something. (A legal phrase.) The judge ordered the merchant to cease and desist the deceptive practices. When they were ordered to cease and desist, they finally stopped.

to stop doing something. You must desist from further attempts to contact your wife. I wish you would desist from calling me Willie.

Stop, leave off doing something, as in: "Bliss excavated at least once on his own and Dr. Brand ... told him to cease and desist" (Douglas Preston quoting Frank Hibben, The New Yorker, June 12, 1995). This legal term is a redundancy, since cease and desist mean virtually the same thing, but often appears in legal documents to avoid possible misinterpretation. [c. 1920]