Other forms: sedated, sedating, sedates
Sedate means calm, unhurried and dignified. A sedate pace, a sedate affair, sedate and respectable.
It is faintly damning when used of an occasion — a sedate party is one where nothing happened. Of a pace it means slow and steady. As a verb, with the stress on the second syllable, to sedate somebody is to give a drug that calms or makes drowsy, and sedation is the medical procedure. Note sedative; and that both senses come from the Latin for settling something down.
1adjectivesedateCalm, unhurried and dignified.
“The old couple walked at a sedate pace along the seafront.”
2verbgiveTo give a drug that calms or makes drowsy.
“The vet sedated the frightened dog before examining its leg.”
sedate is a quality of calm.
Latin sedatus is the participle of sedare, to settle or calm, itself causative of sedere, to sit. Sediment, session and settle come from the same sitting.
Proto-Indo-European
*sed- — to sit
Latin
sēdātus — calm, quiet, composed
Middle English
sedate — not painful or sore
English, today
sedate
Built from
The is derived from Late Middle English sedate (“not painful or sore”), and directly from its Latin sēdātus (“calm, quiet, composed”), participial adjective from sēdō (“to allay, appease, calm, settle; to end, stop”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European sed- (“to sit”). Compare English -ate. The is partly derived from sēdāt-, a of sēdō (to make calm—“to make (someone or something) calm”; see above), and partly a a back-formation from sedation (to give a sedative—“to give (a person) a sedative”) + English -ate. It is first attested slightly later than the adjective.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA