Other forms: seats
A seat is the place where one person sits. Take a seat, a window seat, book a seat.
In politics, a seat is a place in a parliament and the area it represents: win a seat, a safe seat, a marginal seat. In business, a seat is a licence for one user. As a verb, to seat means to have room for: the hall seats four hundred. Note seat belt; take a back seat, meaning to let somebody else lead; and by the seat of your pants, meaning by instinct rather than instruments.
1nounseatThe place where one person sits.~54%
“He gave his seat on the bus to an old woman.”
2nounparliamentA place in a parliament and the area it represents.~46%
“She won the seat at the last election by a small number of votes.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 25 sentences found in the wild and placed 13 of them on a sense (12 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
seat is a place to sit or represent.
Old Norse saeti comes from the Proto-Indo-European root for sitting, which also gives Latin sedere and so sedentary, session and president — somebody who sits in front.
Proto-Indo-European
*sed- — to sit
Proto-Germanic
*sētiją — seat
Old Norse
sæti — seat
Old English
sǣte
Middle English
sete
English, today
seat
From Middle English sete, from Old English sǣte, possibly from (or simply cognate with) Old Norse sæti (“seat”), both from Proto-Germanic sētiją (“seat”), from Proto-Indo-European sed- (“to sit”); compare Old English set (“seat”). site (“location or site”) is probably derived from Old English sǣte (“house”), which is related to Old High German sāza (“sedan, seat, domicile”). 2
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA