Etymology: < French transe (feminine), in Old French transe masculine and feminine, passage, passage from life to death ( St. Alexis, 12th cent.), great apprehension or dread of coming evil (15th cent. in Littré); verbal noun < French transir to pass, depart (especially from life), to die (12th cent.), also (later) to benumb or be numbed by fear or cold, < Latin transīre to pass over, cross, < trans across + īre to go. (Compare Spanish trance danger, last stage of life, Portuguese trance, transe a dreadful circumstance; compare Italian transito ‘a passage or going over; also a trance’ Florio). Palsgrave has ‘Traunce a sickenesse, trance’, and Cotgrave has ‘also, a traunce or sowne; a great astonishment, amazement, or appallment’, but these senses do not appear in Littré or Godefroy; perhaps they were Anglo-Norman; otherwise the chief modern sense of the English word does not appear in French.

Etymology: Known from 16th cent.: origin obscure. The sense is satisfied by Latin transitus, which had the concrete sense ‘passage, way through’, as well as the abstract ‘act of passing through or over’. But Latin transitus could hardly have given Scots transs, trans without passing through French, and the concrete sense is not recorded in Old French.

Etymology: < trance v.²

Etymology: < Spanish trance, formerly tranze danger (see trance n.¹), the original word in all three quots.

Etymology: In sense 1 < Old French transir to pass away, to die: see trance n.¹; in sense 2 < trance n.¹

Etymology: Origin and history obscure: see also trounce v.¹ (The first quot. is also doubtful in form and sense.)