Trance

A normal state of mind, you just don't notice it usually. People go in trance all the time. Have you ever driven a car on a highway, at night? Do you remember the lights, the sound of the car on the road, how you felt the vibrations of the road through the steering wheel ... As you think about this experience, I don't know if you agree that this is indeed a natural trance, but if anything happened, you would be able to react quickly anyway ...

Trance (?), n. [F. transe fright, in OF. also, trance or swoon, fr. transir to chill, benumb, to be chilled, to shiver, OF. also, to die, L. transire to pass over, go over, pass away, cease; trans across, over + ire to go; cf. L. transitus a passing over. See Issue, and cf. Transit.]

1.

A tedious journey.

Halliwell.

2.

A state in which the soul seems to have passed out of the body into another state of being, or to be rapt into visions; an ecstasy.

And he became very hungry, and would have eaten; but while they made ready, he fell into a trance. Acts. x. 10.

My soul was ravished quite as in a trance. Spenser.

3. Med.

A condition, often simulating death, in which there is a total suspension of the power of voluntary movement, with abolition of all evidences of mental activity and the reduction to a minimum of all the vital functions so that the patient lies still and apparently unconscious of surrounding objects, while the pulsation of the heart and the breathing, although still present, are almost or altogether imperceptible.

He fell down in a trance. Chaucer.

© Webster 1913.

Trance, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Tranced (?); p. pr. & vb. n. Trancing (?).]

1.

To entrance.

And three I left him tranced. Shak.

2.

To pass over or across; to traverse.

Trance the world over. Beau. & Fl.

When thickest dark did trance the sky. Tennyson.

© Webster 1913.

Trance (?), v. i.

To pass; to travel.

© Webster 1913.