Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

sequence

UK/ˈsiː.kwəns/US/ˈsi.kwəns/
nounB25 meaningsCommon in everyday speech and writing · #2,771 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: sequences, sequencing, sequenced

A sequence is a set of things that come one after another in a fixed order. The digits of a door code, the steps of a dance, the opening sequence of a film before the title lands.

It is as much about the order as about the things, so you put pages in sequence, and a lab result that arrives out of sequence is worse than no result at all. Film uses it for a run of shots that belong together: a chase sequence, a dream sequence. Maths uses it for an ordered list of numbers, 2, 4, 8, 16, where each one follows a rule. Biology handed it a verb, since to sequence a genome is to read the order of its parts. The adjective is sequential. A set is a heap of things with no order to it; a sequence is a set that has been lined up.

Own work · Public domain

Definitions of sequence

  1. 1nounsequenceA set of things following one another in a fixed order.B2~59%

    “The lock opens on a sequence of four numbers.”

    synonyms: series, succession

  2. 2nounorderThe order in which things come.B2~19%

    “Keep the photos in sequence or the story makes no sense.”

  3. 3nounsectionA section of a film made of shots that belong together.B2~2%

    “The chase sequence took three weeks to shoot.”

  4. 4nounmoleculeThe order of the parts of a molecule such as DNA.C1~10%

    “They compared the sequence with samples from other outbreaks.”

  5. 5verbworkTo work out or set the order of something.C1~10%

    “The lab sequenced the virus within a fortnight.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 15 sentences found in the wild and placed 10 of them on a sense (5 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

sequence is an ordered set.

Also accepted in games: series

Where it comes from

Sequence comes from Latin sequentia, a following, built on sequēns and the verb sequī, to follow, and behind that the Proto-Indo-European root sekʷ-. Old French had it as sequence, where it meant among other things a run of playing cards — one thing following another, which is exactly what a card player still means by it. English took the French word whole in the Middle Ages.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *sekʷ-

  2. Latin

    sequentia — a following

  3. Old French

    sequence — a sequence of cards, answering verses

  4. Middle English

    sequence

  5. English, today

    sequence

Built from

  • sequī · Latin — to follow

From Middle English sequence, from Old French sequence (“a sequence of cards, answering verses”), from Latin sequentia (“a following”), from Latin sequēns (“following”), from sequī (“to follow”); see sequent.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Big Ideas, A Man Called Ove, Dance

First appears in chapter 8 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

sequence in the wild

  • The initial elements of the sequence are F1 = 1 and F2 = 1, though many authors also include a zeroth element F0 = 0.

    Fibonacci sequence

  • The Human Genome Project was started in October 1990, and the first draft sequences of the human genome were reported in April 2003.

    Genome

  • Stars spend the majority of their lives on the main sequence, during which core hydrogen burning is dominant.

    Main sequence

  • The star's position on the main sequence is determined primarily by the mass, but also by age and chemical composition.

    Main sequence

  • Unlike a set, the same elements can appear multiple times at different positions in a sequence, and unlike a set, the order does matter.

    Sequence

1 / 5

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the sequī family

suesequence

sequence — used about once every 401 pages · #2,771 · point at the bar for the others