sedentary

Etymology

It is borrowed from Middle French sédentaire (16th century)^[2][3][4] and directly borrowed from Latin sedentārius (“sitting, remaining in one place”),^[2][3][5][6] from sedēns, the present participle of sedeō (“to sit”),^[3][7][8] with the suffix -ārius, English -ary.^[6][3] The Latin verb comes from Proto-Indo-European *sed- (“to sit”),^[2][8][9] the root of English sit.^[3][10] The OED compares Spanish sedentario, Portuguese sedentario and Italian sedentario.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Remaining in one place, not migratory: 1598,^[3][4] first used of assemblies and parliaments, as opposed to ambulatory ones.^[2] The Oxford Dictionary of English likewise gives "not migratory" as the late 16th-century sense.^[11] The OED's first record is from 1603, in Florio's translation of Montaigne, in the sense "requiring much sitting".^[7][3]

Semantic evolution

Ayto places the word among the many English descendants of Latin sedēre, with session, sediment and supersede.^[10] The first sense, "settled in one place", was used of courts, assemblies and officials established in a fixed place, and of peoples not moving from place to place;^[7][2] it is now rare in general use.^[5] In Florio's Montaigne (1603) the word was applied to habits and occupations that keep a person sitting,^[7][3] and in 1662 to persons who sit much and take little exercise.^[7][2] Earlier, from 1625 to 1707, a sedentary person could be simply slothful or inactive.^[7][5] Johnson (1755) defined it first as "passed in sitting still; wanting motion or action".^[12] Zoology took up the sense "not migratory" or "fixed to one spot" in the 19th century (1851, of molluscs),^[7] and geology used it from 1870 for a residual soil formed in place.^[7][5]

Timeline

• 1598 – remaining in one place, not migratory.^[3][4] The OED's first record of this sense is from 1604.^[7]
• 1603 – of habits and occupations, requiring much sitting.^[7][3]
• 1625 – slothful, inactive (obsolete by 1707).^[7]
• 1662 – of persons, sitting much and taking little exercise.^[7][2]
• 1667 – of a material thing, motionless, in Milton's Paradise Lost (obsolete).^[7][5]
• 1851 – zoology, not migratory; fixed to one spot.^[7]
• 1870 – geology, of a soil, formed in place.^[7]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Involving or requiring much sitting and little physical exercise: a sedentary office job.^[13][4][7]
2. Of a person, tending to sit a great deal and to take little exercise.^[13][7][5]
3. Staying in one place; not migratory or nomadic: sedentary farming communities.^[4][13][7]
4. (zoology) Of an animal, moving little, often because attached to a surface, or remaining in the same region all its life.^[13][7][5]

Word family

• sedentarily
• sedentariness
• nonsedentary
• semisedentary
• unsedentary

Related words

• sit
• session
• sediment
• supersede
• assiduous
• insidious
• assess
• sedent

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b c d e f g Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
10. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
11. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
13. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins