From Middle English processioun, borrowed from Old French pourciession, from Latin prōcessiō, from prōcēdere, past participle prōcessus ("to move forward, advance, proceed"); see proceed.

• IPA: /pɹəˈsɛʃən/

procession (plural processions)

1. The act of progressing or proceeding.
   • 1659, John Pearson, Exposition of the Creed:

     From whence it came to pass in the primitive times , that the Latin fathers taught expressly the procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son

   • 1835, Richard Chenevix Trench, “The Same Continued”, in The Story of Justin Martyr, and Other Poems, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC ↗, page 126 ↗:

     Yet proof is here of men's unquenched desire / That the procession of their life might be / More equable majestic pure and free; […]

2. A group of people or things moving along in an orderly, stately, or solemn manner; a train of persons advancing in order; a retinue.

   a procession of mourners

   the Lord Mayor's procession

   • 1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC ↗, [Act II, scene i], page 126 ↗, column 2:

     Here comes the towneſ-men, on Proceſſion, / To preſent your Highneſſe with the man.

   • 1851 November 13, Herman Melville, chapter I, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC ↗, page 7 ↗:

     By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was welcome; the great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated into my inmost soul, endless processions of the whale, and, mid most of them all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.

   • 1914, Westways, volume 6, page 7:

     The final fifty miles of the race was a procession with little change in the relative positions of the cars […]

3. A number of things happening in sequence (in space or in time).
4. (ecclesiastical, obsolete, in the plural) Litanies said in procession and not kneeling.
5. (cricket) The rapid dismissal of a series of batsmen.

• procedure
• proceed
• process

• French: procession
• Italian: corteo
• Portuguese: avanço
• Spanish: procesión

• French: procession, cortège
• German: Prozession, Umzug
• Italian: corteo
• Portuguese: procissão, cortejo
• Russian: проце́ссия
• Spanish: procesión

• French: kyrielle
• Portuguese: sequência
• Russian: после́довательность

procession (processions, present participle processioning; simple past and past participle processioned)

1. (intransitive) To take part in a procession.
2. (transitive, dated) To honour with a procession.
3. (transitive, legal, US, North Carolina, Tennessee) To ascertain, mark, and establish the boundary lines of (lands).

• process