Also 4–6 transe, 4–7 traunce, 5–7 traunse, trans, 6 trawnce, 6–7 traunss. [a. F. transe fem., in OF. transe m. and f., passage, passage from life to death (St. Alexis, 12th c.), great apprehension or dread of coming evil (15th c. in Littré); verbal sb. f. F. transir to pass, depart (esp. from life), to die (12th c.), also (later) to benumb or be numbed by fear or cold, ad. L. transīre to pass over, cross, f. trans across † īre to go. (Cf. Sp. trance danger, last stage of life, Pg. trance, transe a dreadful circumstance; cf. It. transito ‘a passage or going over; also a trance’ Florio).
Palsgrave has ‘Traunce a sickenesse, trance,’ and Cotgr. has ‘also, a traunce or sowne; a great astonishment, amazement, or appallment,’ but these senses do not appear in Littré or Godef.; perh. they were Anglo-Fr.; otherwise the chief mod. sense of the Eng. word does not appear in F.]
† 1. A state of extreme apprehension or dread; a state of doubt or suspense. Obs.
c. 1374. Chaucer, Troylus, II. 1257 (1306). Troylus … That lay, as doth þese loueres, yn a traunce By-twixen hope and derk desesperaunce.
1390. Gower, Conf., III. 321. This cherles herte is in a traunce, As he which drad him of vengance.
1412–20. Lydg., Chron. Troy, IV. 1536. Þe verray custom & þe pleyn vsaunce Of þis loveris, hangyng in a trance.
c. 1477. Caxton, Jason, 46 b. She was in a trance what she shold saye to her.
1523. Ld. Berners, trans. Froiss., I. cccxliii. 542. Thus these maters hanged in a traunce.
1577. Grange, Golden Aphrod., etc. P ij b. In this traunce of troubles my trembling tongue was partly enioyned to silence.
2. An unconscious or insensible condition; a swoon, a faint; in mod. use, a state characterized by a more or less prolonged suspension of consciousness and inertness to stimulus; a cataleptic or hypnotic condition.
c. 1386. Chaucer, Frankl. T., 353. And longe tyme he lay forth in a traunce.
a. 1533. Ld. Berners, Huon, lxii. 215. She fell downe in a transe, more lyke to be deed than alyue.
1604. Shaks., Oth., IV. i. Stage direct. [Othello] Falls in a Traunce.
1617. Moryson, Itin., I. 249. Most of the night he had lien in a trance.
1715–20. Pope, Iliad, XI. 462. Hector rose, recover’d from the trance.
1821. Byron, Two Foscari, I. i. Happy to escape to death By the compassionate trance, poor nature’s last Resource against the tyranny of pain.
1852. H. Rogers, Eclipse of Faith (1864), 296. Paulus thinks that Christ was only in a trance when he seemed to be dead.
1857. Dunglison, Dict. Med., s.v. Ecstasis, In catalepsy, there is … complete suspension of the intellectual faculties. This last condition is in general described as trance.
1861. Geo. Eliot, Silas M., vii. When Silas Marner was in that strange trance of his.
1899. Syd. Soc. Lex., Trance, catalepsy; ecstasy. The hypnotic state: a prolonged abnormal sleep, in which the vital functions are reduced to a very low ebb, and from which the patients cannot ordinarily be aroused.
3. An intermediate state between sleeping and waking; half-conscious or half-awake condition; a stunned or dazed state.
c. 1386. Chaucer, Sompn. T., 508. The lord sat stille, as he were in a traunce, And in his herte he rolled vp and doun.
c. 1420. ? Lydg., Assembly of Gods, 15. And as I so lay half in a traunse, Twene slepyng and wakyng he bad me aryse. Ibid., 2063. All thys I saw as I lay in a traunce.
c. 1530. Ld. Berners, Arth. Lyt. Bryt. (1814), 245. The noble courte … is all in a traunce, in a maner halfe a slepe.
1549. Compl. Scot., xv. 123. I dee daly in ane transe.
1656. W. Montague, Accompl. Wom., 17. [They] cannot imagine pensivenesse to be anything but such a trans, as mad men or sick persons are in.
1757. Gray, Bard, 13. Glos’ter stood aghast in speechless trance.
b. A state of mental abstraction from external things; absorption, exaltation, rapture, ecstasy.
1434. Misyn, Mending Life, xii. 128. With Swetnes of godis lufe as [he] wer rauischyd in trans, meruelusly rauischid.
1594. Spenser, Amoretti, xxxix. Whylest rapt with joy resembling heavenly madnes, My soule was ravisht quite as in a traunce.
1598. Bacon, Sacr. Medit., Impostors. His … conuersation towards God is full of passion, of zeale, and of traunssis [mispr. tramisses; orig. plena excessus, et zeli, et extasis].
1632. Lithgow, Trav., I. 32. This imaginary heauenly trance.
1696. Phillips (ed. 5), Trance, an Extasy, a Ravishment or Transportation of the Mind, which puts a Man beside himself.
1756–7. trans. Keysler’s Trav. (1760), II. 238. The saint is represented lying in a trance.
1817. Moore, Lalla R., Lt. of Haram, Wks. (1824), 313. As, in a kind of holy trance, She hung above those fragrant treasures.
4. attrib. and Comb., as trance-coma, -medium, -sleep, -state; trance-bound, -like adjs.
1825. J. Neal, Bro. Jonathan, I. 137. Waking out of a trance-like revery.
1849. H. Mayo, Truths Pop. Superstit., v. 82. So are there three degrees of trance-sleep…. The middle grade deserves to be called trance-coma.
1878. Emerson, Misc. Papers, Fort. Repub., Wks. (Bohn), III. 389. The trance-mediums … exasperate the common sense.
1886. H. R. Haweis, Christ & Chr., Light of Ages, v. 143. At Delphi … the priests … uttered what a modern spiritualist would call trance-speeches; they became … what are known as trance mediums.
1903. F. W. H. Myers, Hum. Personality I. 5. The exceptional trance-history of Emmanuel Swedenborg.
