seat
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /siːt/
rhymes: -iːt
Forms: form: seats
form: seating
form: seated
form: seated
Etymology: From Middle English sete, from Old English sǣte, possibly from (or simply cognate with) Old Norse sæti (“seat”), both from Proto-Germanic *sētiją (“seat”), from Proto-Indo-European *sed- (“to sit”); compare Old English set (“seat”).
Sense 2 (“location or site”) is probably derived from Old English sǣte (“house”), which is related to Old High German sāza (“sedan, seat, domicile”).
Cognates
* Middle Dutch gesaete
* Old High German gisazi (modern German Gesäß)
Senses: examples: text: Be sure to seat the gasket properly before attaching the cover.
text: From their foundations, loosening to and fro, / They plucked the seated hills.
ref: 1667, John Milton, “Book VI”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC:
text: One morning I had been driven to the precarious refuge afforded by the steps of the inn, after rejecting offers from the Celebrity to join him in a variety of amusements. But even here I was not free from interruption, for he was seated on a horse-block below me, playing with a fox terrier.
ref: 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter IV, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:
glosses: To put an object into a place where it will rest; to fix; to set firm.
examples: text: This classroom seats two hundred students.
text: The waiter seated us and asked what we would like to drink.
text: The guests were no sooner seated but they entered into a warm debate.
ref: 1712, John Arbuthnot, An Essay Concerning the Effects of Air on Human Bodies:
text: He used to seat you on the piano and then, with vehement gestures and pirouettings, would argue the case. Not one word of the speech did you understand.
ref: 1887, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, History of Woman Suffrage:
text: The older Jungfrau locomotives are of 330 h.p. only, but can push two coaches seating a total of 80 passengers up the 1 in 4 at 4 m.p.h.
ref: 1960 December, Voyageur, “The Mountain Railways of the Bernese Oberland”, in Trains Illustrated, page 755:
glosses: To provide with a place to sit.
examples: text: Please seat the audience after the anthem and then introduce the first speaker.
glosses: To request or direct one or more persons to sit.
examples: text: Only half the delegates from the state were seated at the convention because the state held its primary too early.
text: You have to be a member to be seated at the meeting. Guests are welcome to sit in the visitors section.
qualifier: legislature
glosses: To recognize the standing of a person or persons by providing them with one or more seats which would allow them to participate fully in a meeting or session.
examples: text: to seat a church
glosses: To assign the seats of.
examples: text: This valve isn't seating properly.
text: Thus high […] is King Richard seated.
ref: c. 1593 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Richard the Third: […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene ii]:
text: They had seated themselves in Nova Guiana.
ref: c. 1610?, Walter Raleigh, A Discourse of War:
glosses: To cause to occupy a post, site, or situation; to station; to establish; to fix; to settle.
examples: text: The folds, where sheepe at night doe seat.
ref: 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book VI, Canto IX”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
glosses: To rest; to lie down.
examples: text: to seat a country
text: The Plantations, for the most Part, are high and pleasantly seated
ref: 1747, William Stith, The History of the First Discovery and Settlement of Virginia:
glosses: To settle; to plant with inhabitants.
examples: text: to seat a chair
glosses: To put a seat or bottom in.
Derived terms: word: seat down
word: seat out
word: seated
word: seating
word: unseat
Related terms: seat of learning
seat of wisdom
seat of honor
sedentary
see
sit