trance
/trɑːns
/noun
1A half-conscious state characterized by an absence of response to external stimuli, typically as induced by hypnosis or entered by a medium: she put him into a light trance...
- What I do is enter a light trance state, and then attempt to use touch visualization to climb the rope out of my body.
- This entity was supposed to be a manifestation or thought-form akin to the ectoplasm that is generated by mediums while in a trance state.
- ‘Journeying’ isn't the same as attaining a trance state so you can work as a medium/oracle for example.
1.1A state of abstraction: the kind of trance he went into whenever illness was discussed...
- When I finally snapped out of my trance / ice cream fantasy, I willed myself to continue forward to the object of my quest.
- Danielle snapped out of her trance of imagining construction workers dancing around while trying to wipe dirt out of their eyes.
- A scream that broke him from his trance, from his imagination, and brought him running in the direction of the ballroom.
1.2 (also trance music) [mass noun] A type of electronic dance music characterized by hypnotic rhythms and sounds: in the Hades Warehouse there’s the finest in trance and techno...
- I usually listen to some kind of dance music or trance music or something that is upbeat and continuous.
- Instead of the hip-hop junglist acid garage trance music that usually sounds from outside my window, all I can hear is the drumbeat of war.
- It's important to note that these are not pop songs in any sense of the word - this is traditional trance music with an electric twist, and should be approached as such.
verb [with object] literary
Put into a trance: she’s been tranced and may need waking...
- Her eyes gleamed when she spoke, almost trancing the other person.
- She kept remembering the long look they had shared, and how easily she'd been tranced by those green eyes.
- By the end of the show, a shaman will bring the tranced dancer back to normal by blowing air into the dancer's ear.
Derivatives
trancedly
- In fact to have been trancedly singing ‘Dream onnnnnnnn…’ in the rain would have been magical.
- After throwing the towel into a wicker hamper, she reclined trancedly upon her many-pillowed, lace-canopied bed with its matching swirled pillowcases and comforter.
- The audience, which was either cowering in terror or singing along already (hey, what else.), also trancedly stood silent.
trance-like
- Neither my daughter, Jane, nor my son, Lewis, look up, both absorbed in a music video, their vague, trance-like expressions bathed in glare from the screen.
- Many people imagine hypnosis as a trance-like altered state of consciousness.
- Just don't do the no-blink trance-like scare stare.
Origin
Middle English (originally as a verb in the sense 'be in a trance'): from Old French transir 'depart, fall into trance', from Latin transire 'go across'.
transit from Late Middle English:
Transit initially meant ‘passage from one place to another’. It is from Latin transire ‘go across’. The grammatical term transitive (late 16th century) for verbs that ‘go across’ to an object is from the same source, as are trance (Middle English), and transient (Late Middle English).