/səkˈsiːd/
[verb] To achieve what you were trying to do, or to do well in something. It can also mean to come after someone or something, especially in an important role or position.
Before 'succeed' meant winning, it simply meant walking up to something — success was just showing up.
The word 'succeed' begins its life in Latin, with the verb 'succedere', built from two parts: the prefix 'sub-', meaning 'under' or 'up close to', and 'cedere', meaning 'to go' or 'to move'. Together, 'succedere' had a very physical, spatial meaning — to go up towards something, to move underneath it, or to follow closely behind. There was nothing grand about it. It described a soldier moving up to relieve another at the front, or a younger plant growing up beneath an older one. Success, in its earliest form, was simply a matter of proximity and sequence.
The Latin 'cedere' was a remarkably productive root. It gave English dozens of words, each carrying its own directional story: 'procedere' (to go forward) became 'proceed', 'recedere' (to go back) became 'recede', 'accedere' (to go towards) became 'accede', and 'excedere' (to go beyond) became 'exceed'. Every one of these words is a tiny act of movement, frozen in language. The chain runs clearly: Latin 'succedere' → Old French 'succeder' → Middle English 'succeden' → modern English 'succeed'.
When 'succeden' arrived in English in the late 14th century, it carried both of its Latin meanings intact. A king could 'succeed' his father — that is, follow him in sequence, step into his place. Seasons succeeded one another. One idea succeeded another in an argument. This sense of ordered replacement, of one thing coming after another in a natural or rightful line, was the word's primary meaning for a long time. Even today, when we talk about a 'successor' to a throne or a business leader, we are using 'succeed' in this ancient, sequential sense.
The meaning we use most often today — achieving a goal, doing well at something — grew slowly out of that original idea of 'following up'. If you moved up close to a target and reached it, you had succeeded. The 'going towards' became 'getting there'. By the 15th and 16th centuries, writers were using 'succeed' to describe plans and efforts that turned out well. Shakespeare used it freely in both senses — characters succeed to thrones, and battles succeed or fail. The two meanings lived comfortably side by side, and still do.
The noun 'success' followed the same path, arriving in English in the mid-16th century from Latin 'successus', the past participle of 'succedere'. Interestingly, early uses of 'success' were neutral — a plan could have good success or bad success, just as a result could be a good outcome or a bad one. Only gradually did 'success' come to assume its positive flavour, until by the 18th and 19th centuries it had fully settled into meaning a good or triumphant result. Our modern obsession with success as a personal achievement would have puzzled a Roman, for whom 'successus' was simply whatever came next.