On the lookout ... Prince Charles
Photograph: Stephen Hird/AFP/Getty

So, we learn this week that the Prince of Wales thinks of himself as "a dissident working against the prevailing political consensus", though as the Guardian leader column points out this is only the opinion of his former media adviser, Mark Bolland. To the OED then, where we find that dissident is from sedere, to sit - roughly, the idea is of "sitting apart". To me this sounds endearingly grumpy, conjuring up a mental image of dissidents being the kind of people who don't like to sit with the other children.

It's revealing how important sitting is in etymologies and metaphors of power. A cathedral is so named after the bishop's chair (the "cathedra" - hence the pope's recently invented infallibility when speaking "ex cathedra", or "out of his seat", so to speak). University professors are so associated with their chairs that it becomes their job description. Judges and magistrates sit in judgment, while defendants stand trial. And of course, Charles Windsor hopes one day to sit on the throne - whether he will still be sitting apart from everyone else at that point remains to be seen.

The OED entry on chair includes an intriguing definition I wasn't aware of: "c. pl. The chairman and deputy chairman of the East India Company." Later, our interests in India were represented by the even more euphemistically named Residents - a word which also comes from sedere.

I have been told that the association of academics with chairs is part of our debt to the Arab-Muslim world. Apparently during the heyday of Islamic civilisation teachers sat in chairs while students sat on the ground, and when Europeans finally got round to establishing universities, around the eleventh century, they imitated the already venerable institutions of their neighbours. (Later, of course, we became degenerate, and now students sit while academics stand.) I can't find any support for this version of events at the moment - can gentle readers provide any?

For the other associations of chairs and authority, we can guess at two processes. Either sitting shows that a person in authority does not have to defer to others by standing, or politicians and bosses are idle shirkers who sit on their behinds all the livelong day. Take your pick.