trance

Trance comes from Middle English traunce, borrowed from Anglo-Norman transe, meaning fear of coming evil or the passage from life to death. That word traces back to transir, to be numb with fear or to die, from Latin trānseō, to cross over.

The noun likely grew out of a separate Middle English verb, trauncen, which meant to move about, prance, or trample the ground — a sense that survives today in the word trounce.

Trounce comes from the same Middle English verb root as the trance-verb, though its meaning shifted toward beating or defeating someone rather than moving oddly.