paiier

Forms

paiier (present participle paiant; past participle paiié; first-person singular present pai)^[1]

• paier, paer, payer, paaer, peier, peyer, poier, poyer^[2][1]

In the BFM, NCA and DMF corpora païer and paier are by far the commonest spellings, beside payer, paiier and poier.^[3] The AND lists paer, payer, peier, peyer and poier among the insular spellings.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin pācō (“to pacify, subdue”),^[1][4][5][6] a verb formed from pāx (“peace”).^[7][1] In Latin it meant to impose peace on a land or people.^[8]

Gamillscheg holds that already in Vulgar Latin it had taken the sense of paying a war indemnity, probably first as a euphemism.^[5] Bloch and Wartburg date the sense "to appease" to the 4th century and see "to satisfy" and then "to pay" as its Romance development,^[9] and the TLFi and the DHLF likewise assume a shift in Late Latin to the moral sense "to satisfy, appease", from which the Romance languages took "to satisfy with money".^[6][10] Its Romance cognates include Italian pagare, Spanish pagar and Portuguese pagar.^[11]

The money sense seems to have reached northern France from the south: Old Occitan pagar has it a little earlier, in 1137, while in French it appears only about 1170.^[10][9] Until then Old French said soudre, from Latin solvō (“to loosen; to pay”), which the new verb displaced by the end of the Middle Ages.^[10][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLFi's first record is the reflexive verb in the Vie de saint Léger, of the second half of the 10th century, meaning "to make peace with someone".^[6] The Passion de Clermont, which the DEAF dates to about 1000, has paierent in the sense of being satisfied with something.^{[12][13][14][6]}

Semantic evolution

In the oldest texts the verb belongs to peace-making: to appease, to reconcile, and reflexively to make one's peace with someone, a use that lasted until the 13th century.^[6][4][15] From "to satisfy" it passed to satisfying a creditor: from about 1170, in Chrétien de Troyes, it means to give what is owed, and soon after to pay a person for something.^[6][16] The ironic paier de cos "to pay out blows", to deal them, is in Chrétien's Yvain.^[6][16]

The old senses of appeasing and contenting remained common in Old French, and the FEW records the sense "to satisfy" into the 17th century.^[9][4] The modern verb is French payer, whose figurative uses such as payer de sa personne date from the 16th and 17th centuries.^[6][10]

Timeline

• 950–1000 – reflexive, "to make peace with someone", in the Vie de saint Léger.^[6]
• c. 1000 – paierent "were satisfied" in the Passion de Clermont.^[12][13][14]
• 1150–1175 – the AND's first insular citation.^[2]
• c. 1170 – "to give what is owed" in Chrétien de Troyes's Erec et Enide.^[6][17]
• 1176–1180 – paier de cos "to deal blows" in Chrétien's Yvain.^[6][18]
• 1180 – "to pay someone, reward" in Marie de France's Fables.^[6]
• 1175–1200 – paier in Garin le Loherain.^[19]

Meanings

Verb

1. to appease, pacify, reconcile.^[15][2][4]
2. (reflexive) to make peace, to be reconciled with someone.^[6][15]
3. to content, satisfy; to please; reflexive, to be content with.^[2][4]
4. to pay a sum or a debt; to pay or reward a person.^[2][6][16]
5. (of blows) to deal, strike.^[2][16]

Anglo-Norman

The AND heads the verb paier, first cites it from the third quarter of the 12th century, and lists spellings from paaer and paer to poyere.^[2] Beside paying it keeps the older senses of appeasing, contenting and pleasing, with an impersonal use "it pleases me that", and the participle as an adjective "content, satisfied".^[2] The Anonimalle Chronicle still uses the old sense: De quel respouns le duc ne fust my payé "with which answer the duke was not at all satisfied".^[20] Middle English took the verb about 1200 as paien "to appease, satisfy", and the money sense became the English verb pay; the sense "to please" died out in English by 1500.^[21]

Word family

• repaiier
• paiement

Descendants

• Middle French payer (→ French payer)^[1]
• Norman payer^[1]
• Middle Dutch payen (borrowed; → Dutch paaien)^[1]
• Middle English payen (borrowed; → English pay, Scots pey)^[1]

Related words

• pais

Usage notes

Tobler–Lommatzsch and the DÉCT head the word paiier,^[22][17] Godefroy and the AND paier,^[23][2] and the DMF payer.^[24]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–), p. s.v. paier
3. ^ FROLEX 3.0, lexique morphologique du français médiéval (IXe–XVe s.), Base de français médiéval, ENS de Lyon (from the BFM, the Nouveau Corpus d'Amsterdam and the DMF), github.com/sheiden/Medieval-French-Language-Toolkit
4. ^ a b c d e Wartburg, Walther von, et al. (1922–2002), Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 25 vols., Bonn / Leipzig / Basel: Klopp / Teubner / Zbinden, p. 7:454
5. ^ a b Gamillscheg, Ernst (1966–1969), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der französischen Sprache, 2nd, fully revised ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 728
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n 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
7. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. pāco
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. pācō
9. ^ a b c d Bloch, Oscar; Wartburg, Walther von (1989), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, 8th ed., Paris: Presses universitaires de France, p. 510
10. ^ a b c d Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. payer
11. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6132
12. ^ a b Baldinger, Kurt; Möhren, Frankwalt; Städtler, Thomas, eds. (1971–2021), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'ancien français (DEAF), Heidelberg: Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften; DEAFél / DEAFpré, deaf-server.adw.uni-heidelberg.de, p. s.v. paiier
13. ^ a b Rainsford, Thomas, CorMétAF: lemmatised extracts of Old and Middle French verse and prose (990–1500), github (texts by siglum), p. PassionA
14. ^ a b Rainsford, Thomas (2025), Old Gallo-Romance Corpus, github (the earliest Gallo-Romance texts, lemmatised; texts by siglum), p. PassionA
15. ^ a b c Greimas, Algirdas Julien (1979), Dictionnaire de l'ancien français jusqu'au milieu du XIVe siècle, 2nd ed., Paris: Larousse (printing of 1988), p. s.v. paier
16. ^ a b c d Foerster, Wendelin; Breuer, Hermann (1914), Kristian von Troyes: Wörterbuch zu seinen sämtlichen Werken, Halle: Niemeyer, p. 201
17. ^ a b Dictionnaire électronique de Chrétien de Troyes (DÉCT), LFA / Université d'Ottawa – ATILF, CNRS / Université de Lorraine (2014), p. s.v. paiier
18. ^ UD Old French PROFITEROLE and UD Middle French PROFITEROLE treebanks, Universal Dependencies (from the SRCMF and the Base de français médiéval; texts by DEAF siglum), p. YvainF
19. ^ Camps, Jean-Baptiste, et al., Geste: a lemmatised corpus of Old French chansons de geste, github (texts by DEAF siglum), p. GarLorrI
20. ^ Wiktionnaire (French Wiktionary), fr.wiktionary.org
21. ^ Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
22. ^ Tobler, Adolf; Lommatzsch, Erhard (1925–2002), Altfranzösisches Wörterbuch, 11 vols., Berlin / Wiesbaden / Stuttgart: Weidmann / Steiner, p. 7:23
23. ^ Godefroy, Frédéric (1881–1902), Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IXe au XVe siècle, 10 vols., Paris: Vieweg / Bouillon, p. 5:688
24. ^ Dictionnaire du Moyen Français, version 2015 (DMF 2015), ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, atilf.fr/dmf, p. s.v. payer