The Words "pair" and "pairie"
The French word pairie is equivalent to the English "peerage". The individual title, pair in French and "peer" in English, derives from the Latin par, "equal"; it signifies those noblemen and prelates considered to be equal to the monarch in honor (even though they be his vassals), and it considers the monarch thus to be primus inter pares, or "first among equals".
The main uses of the word refer to two historical traditions in the French kingdom, before and after the First French Empire of Napoleon I. The word also exists to describe an institution in the Crusader states.
Some etymologists posit that the French (and English) word baron, taken from the Latin baro, also derives from the Latin par. Such a derivation would fit the early sense of "baron", as used for the whole peerage and not simply as a noble rank below the comital.
Read more about this topic: Peerage Of France
Famous quotes containing the words the words, words and/or pair:
“We have the words in our pockets,
obscure directions. The old ones
have taken away the light of their presence....”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“The echo is, to some extent, an original sound, and therein is the magic and charm of it. It is not merely a repetition of what was worth repeating in the bell, but partly the voice of the wood; the same trivial words and notes sung by a wood-nymph.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)