The act of sitting down or settling; a period of being seated.
From 'down' plus 'sit' (from Old English 'sittan', to sit) plus '-ing' suffix. Archaic or literary term, more common in older religious or poetic texts.
This word appears in the King James Bible and medieval literature, showing how older English added 'down' to many verbs for emphasis—'downsitting' sounds more formal and deliberate than just 'sitting'!
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