Reseating

Part of speech: verb, noun

Definitions

1. Assigning a fresh place to sit to people, such as moving guests or students into different chairs
2. Putting people into new seats, often as part of rearranging a room, vehicle, or arena
3. Providing someone with another place to sit, or arranging seats again for an audience or group

Etymology: "Reseating" is the present participle and gerund of "reseat", which is formed simply by attaching the prefix "re-" to "seat". The prefix comes from Latin "re-", meaning "again" or "back", and it passed into English through Old French, where it was used in the same way to build new verbs from existing ones. "Seat" is an older English word, so the new verb needs no special history of its own: it means putting something back into a seat or giving it a new one. The word's meaning follows directly from its parts. A chair that has come loose can be reseated, and a dentist may reseat a crown, while a stadium or a theatre may reseat its audience after a renovation. The noun form, as in the word for the act itself, is built the same way and carries the same sense of starting afresh with the seating arrangement.

Synonyms: repositioning, rearranging