saisir

Inherited from Middle French saisir, from Old French saisir, seisir (whence English seize), from Early Medieval Latin sacīre (“lay claim to, take seisin”), from Frankish *sakjan (“to sue, litigate; accuse”). Compare Old English sacian (“to strive, brawl”), Faroese saka (“to hurt; accuse”), obsolete English sake (“strife”).

Alternatively Old French saisir, seisir may be borrowed from Old High German *sazjan and thus cognate to German setzen (“to set”) and Gothic 𐍃𐌰𐍄𐌾𐌰𐌽 (satjan).

• IPA^(key): /sɛ.ziʁ/ ~ /se.ziʁ/

• Audio:

  (file)

saisir

1. to take hold of; to grab
2. to seize, to take (an illegal product), to capture
3. to grasp mentally; understand
4. (computing) to capture (screen or data)
5. (computing) to type (something) into a computer; to input
6. (accounting) to record (something) in an account, ledger, etc.
7. (law) to vest a court with a case; to refer a matter to a court

This is a regular verb of the second conjugation, like finir, choisir, and most other verbs with infinitives ending in -ir. One salient feature of this conjugation is the repeated appearance of the infix -iss-.

• “saisir”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé , 2012.