WORD HISTORY: Seance

The origins of séance are surprisingly mundane, given the mysterious atmosphere associated with the word. It comes from French séance, "seat, session," from Old French seoir, "to sit." In French as in English the word came to be used specifically for a meeting of people to receive spiritualistic messages (a sense first recorded in English in 1845), but earlier in French and English the word had been used for meetings more generally. One can, after all, do many things while seated. Certainly the second recorded use of the word in English in 1803 does not promise the frisson of an encounter with the spirit world: "your séances . . . which I have a shrewd suspicion must be something dull." Perhaps the writer was referring to the meetings of a legislature or learned society, which sometimes put attendees to sleep rather than into a trance.