1670s, "train of followers or attendants," from French suite, from Old French suite, sieute "act of following, attendance" (see suit, n., which is an earlier borrowing of the same French word). The meanings "set of instrumental compositions" (1680s), "connected set of rooms" (1716), and "set of furniture" (1805) were imported from French usages or re-spelled on the French model from suit in its sense of "a number of things taken collectively and constituting a sequence; collection of things of like kind."