session

What it means

1. 1.

   A long stretch of drinking, usually somewhere private and unplanned. 'A bit of a session' means the night got away from everyone.

2. 2.

   A traditional music session in a pub — musicians playing informally for themselves. The same word, and context is the only thing distinguishing them.

In use

• The house party turned into a serious session.

• There's a session in Sheehan's on Thursday nights.

  Note: Here it is the musical sense — in print it is often given the Irish spelling, seisiún.

Where it comes from

English 'session' in the sense of a sitting, borrowed into Irish as 'seisiún' for the musical gathering and back again. The drinking sense and the music sense grew up beside each other because historically they happened in the same room.

Other forms

Spellings and variants:

sesh, seisiún