'Sequence' is Latin for 'that which follows' — it entered English through liturgical music before science.
A particular order in which related events, movements, or things follow each other; to arrange in a particular order.
From Late Latin 'sequentia' (that which follows, a following, a succession), from Latin 'sequēns' (following), present participle of 'sequī' (to follow, to come after, to pursue), from PIE *sekʷ- (to follow). This root is a major source of English vocabulary: 'sequel' (what follows), 'consequence' (what follows together with), 'prosecute' (to follow forward), 'persecute' (to follow through, relentlessly), 'execute' (to follow out to completion), 'obsequious' (following after, servile), 'sect' (a group that follows a path), 'sue' and 'suit' (via Old French 'suivre,' to follow), 'pursue' (to follow forth), and 'second' (the one that follows the first, via Latin 'secundus,' following). The word also connects to 'segue' (Italian, from 'seguire,' to follow), 'non sequitur' (it does not follow), and 'intrinsic/extrinsic' (following inward/outward). The mathematical and computational sense of 'sequence' — an
In medieval church music, a 'sequentia' was a hymn sung after the Alleluia — literally 'the thing that follows.' The most famous surviving sequence is the 'Dies Irae' (Day of Wrath), a thirteenth-century hymn about the Last Judgment. The musical sense of 'sequence' as something that follows predates the mathematical and scientific senses by centuries.
Words closest in meaning, ranked by similarity