Procession
nounA group of people or vehicles moving forward in an orderly, often ceremonial, line.
How to spell procession
10 letters · 3 syllables
How to pronounce procession
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does procession mean?
- nounA group of people or vehicles moving forward in an orderly, often ceremonial, line.
Procession in a sentence
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The funeral procession moved slowly through the town centre.
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Crowds lined the street to watch the carnival procession pass.
Where does procession come from?
Language of origin: Latin
The word comes from the Latin processio, meaning 'a going forward' or 'advance', a noun built on the verb procedere, 'to move ahead'. That verb combined the prefix pro-, meaning 'forward', with cedere, 'to go' or 'to yield', the same root that gives us 'proceed', 'recede', and 'concede'. The literal sense of a body of people moving forward in orderly fashion was carried into the language of the early Christian church, where it described religious parades and formal entries. English borrowed the word through Old French during the 1100s and 1200s, and it kept its solemn, ceremonial flavour. The double s in the middle reflects the Latin past-participle stem cess- rather than the present-tense cede, which is exactly why the spelling trips people who expect to see the familiar 'cede'.
How the word is built
- pro- (forward)
- cess (from cedere: to go)
- -ion (noun suffix)
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