sequel

The Latin noun sequela, meaning a consequence or that which follows, derived from sequi, the verb for following in any sense: following a path, following a leader, following an argument to its conclusion. Cicero used sequela in the first century BCE to mean a logical consequence. The word's shape is businesslike: the suffix -ela attached to the verbal stem to name the thing that comes after.

The Proto-Indo-European root behind sequi is sekw-, meaning to follow, and it was extraordinarily fertile. From it came Latin socius, companion or one who follows, which gave English 'social' and 'society.' The same root produced Greek hepesthai (to follow) and English 'second' by way of Latin secundus, meaning the one who follows or the favorable one. When you are second in line, etymologically you are simply the one who follows.

Middle English borrowed sequele in the fifteenth century, mostly in legal and theological writing, to mean a consequence or result. The sense was causal: a disease and its sequelae, an action and its moral sequel. By the sixteenth century, English writers used it for the conclusion of a narrative, the part that comes after the main story has ended. The literary meaning was the minority usage for another two centuries.

The modern domination of 'sequel' by film and publishing is a twentieth-century phenomenon. Producers in 1930s Hollywood needed a word for a follow-up picture, and 'sequel' was precise where 'follow-up' was vague. By 1950 it had become standard industry vocabulary, and by 2000 it had largely displaced the older sense of 'consequence' in everyday speech. The word that once described plague outcomes now describes a franchise's second installment.