paître

Forms

paître (defective)^[1] Old French peistre, pestre, petre, then paistre;^[2][3][4] paître in 1636 (Monet).^[2][3][4] A defective verb: it has no simple past, no imperfect subjunctive and no past participle in current use.^[5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old French paistre, inherited from Latin pāscō (“to lead to pasture, feed”).^{[4][2][6][7][8]} In Latin the verb meant “to feed, fatten”, figuratively “to make grow, delight”, and more specially “to graze”, since the general sense “to nourish” belonged to alō.^[2][4]

Rey traces the verb to an Indo-European root meaning “to feed”, also seen in Gothic 𐍆𐍉𐌳𐌾𐌰𐌽 (fōdjan) and Ancient Greek πατέομαι (patéomai, “to eat”);^[2][5] Wiktionary takes it through Proto-Italic *pāskō from Proto-Indo-European *peh₂- (“to protect”).^[1]

Cognate with Italian pascere, Occitan paisser, Catalan péixer, Spanish pacer, Portuguese pascer and Romanian paște.^[5][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

In the Vie de saint Alexis (about 1050) it is transitive and means “to give food to, feed” a person.^[4][3][2]

Semantic evolution

Old French used the verb for feeding people and animals, often figuratively: de joie paüz “fed with joy” in Chrétien de Troyes (about 1170), paistre ses ex de larmes “to feed one's eyes on tears” (about 1200).^[4] From about 1160 it meant “to feed (birds, a stag)”, and about 1200 “to lead animals to pasture”.^[4][2] The intransitive sense “to graze” appears in 1119, of a goat, and it is the one that prevailed: during the 12th century usage came to reserve the verb for animals.^[4][2] The sense “to feed a person” now lives mainly in the compound repaître.^[2]

The causative faire paître soon took the figurative sense “to lure with empty promises” (1174–1176) and “to deceive” (1178).^[4][2] Envoyer paître “to send packing” is in Villon (1461), beside chasser paistre (1456–1467), which has disappeared.^[4][2] The spiritual sense of a pastor feeding his flock is recorded in the early 13th century.^[4]

Bloch and Wartburg note that the verb is now little used in the Gallo-Romance dialects outside the south-west, where pâturer and pacager take its place.^[6]

Timeline

• c. 1050 – “To feed (a person)” in the Vie de saint Alexis.^[4][3]
• 1119 – Philippe de Thaon uses it intransitively of a grazing goat.^[4]
• c. 1160 – Paistre les oisels “to feed the birds” in Eneas.^[4]
• 1174–1176 – Faire pestre “to lure with false promises” in Guernes de Pont-Sainte-Maxence.^[4][2]
• c. 1200 – “To lead to pasture”: paistre les pors in the Dialogues of Gregory.^[4][2]
• 1461 – Villon has envoyer paistre “to send packing”.^[4][2]
• 1544 – The present participle paissant is used as an adjective.^[4][2]
• 1636 – Monet spells it paître.^[3]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive) Of animals: to graze, to eat grass where it grows.^[5][4][10]
2. (transitive) To eat (grass, fallen fruit) where it grows, to browse on: les vaches paissent l'herbe du pré.^[5][4]
3. (dated or literary) To lead (animals) to pasture, to tend: mener paître, faire paître.^[5][4]
4. (obsolete) To feed (an animal), as in falconry.^[5][3][9]
5. Envoyer paître (familiar): to send someone packing, to dismiss rudely.^[5][2]

Word family

• repaître
• paissance

Related words

• pâture
• pacage
• repas
• appât
• Latin pāscō

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
3. ^ a b c d e f Guilbert, Louis; Lagane, René; Niobey, Georges, eds. (1971–1978; 1989), Grand Larousse de la langue française, Paris: Larousse
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u Trésor de la langue française informatisé (2004), ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, atilf.fr/tlfi; electronic version of Imbs, Paul; Quemada, Bernard, eds. (1971–1994), Trésor de la langue française, Paris: CNRS / Gallimard
5. ^ a b c d e f g h Rey-Debove, Josette; Rey, Alain, eds. (2007), Le Petit Robert de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
6. ^ a b Bloch, Oscar; Wartburg, Walther von (1989), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, 8th ed., Paris: Presses universitaires de France
7. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (2005), Le Grand Robert de la langue française, electronic version, Paris: Le Robert
8. ^ Wartburg, Walther von, et al. (1922–2002), Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 25 vols., Bonn / Leipzig / Basel: Klopp / Teubner / Zbinden, p. 7, 695a
9. ^ a b Littré, Émile (1873–1877), Dictionnaire de la langue française, 4 vols. and supplement, Paris: Hachette
10. ^ Dictionnaire Le Robert en ligne, dictionnaire.lerobert.com (accessed 2024)