When the word session was first borrowed into the English language in the fifteenth century, it meant "a place for sitting". This definition quickly died out, but the word soon came to refer to a gathering of people for legislative or business matters particularly. Not long after, this got applied to everything else, and our the modern senses of the term (from recording music to meetings of the court) were born. Through Old French, it comes from Latin sessionem, which meant "the act of sitting". Sessionem traces to the verb sedere, or "to sit", and that (by way of Proto-Italic) in turn derives from Proto-Indo-European sed, also "sit". After becoming popularized in the mid-sixteenth century, usage of the word session stagnated over time, today making up about 0.00256% of all written English.
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AUTHORHello! I'm Adam Aleksic. This year, I graduated from Harvard University with a degree in Government and Linguistics. There, I co-founded the Harvard Undergraduate Linguistics Society and wrote a thesis on Serbo-Croatian language policy, magna cum laude. In addition to etymology, I also really enjoy philosophy, trivia, vexillology, geography, board games, conlanging, art history, and law.
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