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I never seem to remember the meaning of word 'concede' even though I looked up in a dictionary about ten times. So I decided to make up 5 sentences so the word finally sticks to me. Can someone please tell me if my understanding/usage is correct?

  1. I never thought she would concede her wrongdoings at the end. (Verb)
  2. I did not know if she can be concessible. (Adjective)
  3. The party acknowledged concededly. (Adv)
  4. This time of the year, people are more generous and easily concede any special requests. (Grant)
  5. There is no choice but to be a country of conceder for PNG as it lacks man power and financial resources. (Noun)
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    #'s 2,3,5 sound wrong because of your derivations of 'concede'. I've never heard those before. Did your dictionaries allow those? A lot of derivations are just not mentioned in dictionaries, but in these cases they don't work. 1and 4 are perfectly fine.
    – Mitch
    May 14, 2015 at 12:49
  • @Mitch: I'm as surprised as you are. But they do exist according to wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org/wiki/concededly en.wiktionary.org/wiki/concessible
    – Tushar Raj
    May 14, 2015 at 12:59
  • I used the thefreedictionary.com/concede and dictionary.reference.com/browse/conceder.
    – Ananda
    May 14, 2015 at 13:04
  • The latter has additional forms of the word 'concede' where i found: concededly, adverb conceder, noun concessible, adjective
    – Ananda
    May 14, 2015 at 13:05
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    @Ananda ... and since the free dictionary did not give any clues as to their meanings, you took a wild guess and came out completely wrong. Voting to close for the reason of not enough research. There are actual definitions in other dictionaries on line.
    – Peter Shor
    May 14, 2015 at 13:07

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I believe you are missing the spirit of making concessions, and worse you are close enough to general understanding of the word 'concede' that many of your critics will purport that you are correct.

cede - relinquish ownership [or control] of (some possession).
concede - resign, cease resistance; ‘to give up’ an argument, standoff, impasse, etc.; withdraw prior contention or opinion from conversation for the sake of moving on.

Pleading 'No Contest' (nolo contendere) in court proceedings is a real-life example of conceding that adequately respects the many facets of the meaning behind the word 'concede': (these are not synonyms but rather ingredients necessary for 'concede' to apply)

  • a dispute
  • reluctance to change opinion or admit/feign agreement
  • Unwillingness to endure a battle of incompatible opinions
  • The value of a potential eventual victory is no longer greater than the expected value derived from officially maintaining a conflicting opinion.

Pleading 'No Contest' tells the court that you are aware of the charges and that you do not intend to fight the charges; you thus concede the case and your opponent wins by default. Similarly, conversations and arguments can hit standstills and impasses that prevent the conversation from continuing normally, or even amicably, until someone concedes and decides to give in, whether or not their opinion has been swayed whatsoever.

"Fighting a losing battle" and "throwing good money after bad" are phrases that attempt to highlight the futility of an endeavor, its "rightness" or "wrongness" notwithstanding.

Some commentary on your examples:

I never thought she would concede her XYZ at the end. (Verb)

XYZ in this case can be things like belief, opinion.
XYZ would be something that opponents would be attempting to show to be invalid.
XYZ in this case is notably not anything physical. (You can't concede your wallet or your glasses.)

I did not know if she can be concessible. (Adjective)

Here, 'she' would have to stand for some idea that we endearingly refer to as feminine, like "Lady Liberty".

The party acknowledged concededly. (Adv)

This sounds more like it is meant to describe that "the party reluctantly acknowledged their defeat."

This time of the year, people are more generous and easily concede any special requests. (Grant)
Here, 'accommodate' would be a far better choice than 'concede' for many reasons:
Here, 'requests' are concessible.

All in all:

When that would otherwise be in wait, pending you concede, you are seeking to continue an interaction, situation, or dialogue, even though you may or may o longer agree with the premises.

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I have never encountered the words concessible (Sentence 2), nor concededly (Sentence 3), nor, it seems, has Oxford Dictionaries Online.

In Sentence 5, though the word conceder exists, I am puzzled as to what a country of conceder for PNG (Papua New Guinea?) might be. It makes no sense to me.

Sentences 1 and 4 are fine.

Later Edit.

Having gone to higher authority - the OED - I've discovered it does have concessible, meaning 'that which can be conceded', with the following examples: ,

1767 L. Sterne Life Tristram Shandy IX. xxiii. 82 It was built upon one of the most concessible postulatum in nature.

1845 T. Carlyle in O. Cromwell Lett. & Speeches I. 452 Their claim,..was just:..though full of intricacy; difficult to render clear and concessible.

and concededly meaning 'admittedly'.

1882 N. York Tribune 22 Mar. The present Executive Mansion..is concededly not what it ought to be.

Notwithstanding my discoveries of these somewhat archaic forms I am still having difficulty grasping the meaning of sentences 2 and 3.

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  • I'm as surprised as you are. But they do exist according to wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org/wiki/concededly en.wiktionary.org/wiki/concessible
    – Tushar Raj
    May 14, 2015 at 13:00
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    Concededly, these words exist; but the OP's suggested usages are completely wrong.
    – Peter Shor
    May 14, 2015 at 13:04
  • My sentence may have been incorrectly structured. What I wanted to say is PNG is a small, powerless country so it tends to compromise when dealing with other countries. I.e., definition below: 3. To make a concession: compromise. Idioms: give and take, go fifty-fifty, meet someone halfway.
    – Ananda
    May 14, 2015 at 13:13
  • WS2: Dictionaries, even the best like OED, do not always give all possible morphological derivations (prefixes and suffixes). So you can't take the absence of evidence as evidence of it not existing at all. It gives possibly a hint, but is not proof. Of course we agree on these particular words, they sound very 'made up'. However, I do like 'concessible', and will endeavor to engage in legal action just in order to be able to use it.
    – Mitch
    May 14, 2015 at 15:25
  • @Mitch Oh yes - the mighty OED had them - though with no examples since the 19th century. It was the puny little Oxford Dictionaries Online which didn't include them.
    – WS2
    May 14, 2015 at 19:50

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