trance

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English traunce, also trance and transe,^[2][3] borrowed from Old French transe (“passage, passage from life to death; dread of coming evil”),^[4][5][6][7] with the Anglo-Norman forms trauns and trance.^[2][5] The Anglo-Norman word, recorded from about 1185, meant passing away or death, and the state between life and death.^[8] It is a verbal noun from transir (“to pass away, die; later, to be numb with fear or cold”),^[4][5][3] from Latin trānseō (“to go across, pass over”),^[4][5][9] formed from trāns (“across”) and eō (“to go”),^[4][5][10] from Proto-Indo-European *ey- (“to go”).^[5] The Latin verb could also mean "to pass away, die".^[5][11] Klein compares Spanish trance and Portuguese trance, used of the time of passing from life to death,^[9] and Etymonline notes that the modern French sense of trance was borrowed back from English.^[5] The verb trance, first "to die, swoon" (1340), came from transir, and later "to put into a trance" from the noun.^[4][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The verb, to pass away or to swoon, is recorded first, in 1340, in Richard Rolle's Pricke of Conscience.^[4] The noun first meant a state of extreme dread or suspense: about 1374, in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde.^[4][3]

Semantic evolution

The fearful sense was gone by the late 16th century.^[4][7] Chaucer also used the word for a half-waking, dazed state (about 1386, in the Summoner's Tale) and for an unconscious condition or swoon (about 1395, in the Franklin's Tale).^[4][3] Etymonline sums up the general notion as "a passage away or apart", the soul seeming to leave the body.^[5] From 1434 it also meant rapture or religious ecstasy,^[4] and Johnson (1755) defined it as a state in which the soul is carried off into visions.^[12] The OED notes that the main modern sense, a swoon, is not found in French dictionaries and may have been Anglo-Norman.^[4] The modern sense of a hypnotic or cataleptic state, or that of a spiritualist medium, grew out of the old swoon,^[4][13] and in 1980 the word was first used of hypnotic music, later of a type of electronic dance music.^[4][5]

Timeline

• 1340 – verb, to die, to swoon (obsolete by 1632).^[4]
• c. 1374 – a state of extreme dread or suspense (obsolete by 1577).^[4][3]
• c. 1386 – a half-conscious or dazed state.^[4]
• c. 1395 – an unconscious condition, a swoon.^[4][3]
• 1434 – rapture, ecstasy.^[4]
• 1597 – verb, to put into a trance; to enrapture.^[4]
• 1980 – hypnotic music; later, a kind of electronic dance music.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. A state like sleep in which a person does not respond to the outside world, as under hypnosis: The hypnotist snapped his fingers and the volunteer came out of the trance.^[13][11][4]
2. A dazed or stupefied state, as of someone lost in thought: He walked home in a trance after the news.^[13][11]
3. A state of religious ecstasy or mystical absorption.^[13][4]
4. The state in which a spiritualist medium is said to be controlled by a spirit.^[13][11]
5. A type of electronic dance music with a hypnotic, repetitive beat.^[4][5]
6. (obsolete, 1374–1577) A state of extreme dread or suspense.^[4][7]

Verb

1. (chiefly poetic) To put into a trance; to entrance or enrapture.^[4][7][11]

Word family

• trancelike

Related words

• transit
• transient
• entrance
• transition

Usage notes

In Scots, trance was a passage or lobby in a house,^[14][11] perhaps short for transit.^[11] A dialect verb trance, to move about briskly or prance, has a separate, obscure origin,^[4][7][11] and a 16th-century trance, danger, was taken borrowed from Spanish trance.^[4]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
7. ^ a b c d e f Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
9. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
10. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
11. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
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 e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
14. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)