pawn

Note: Anglo-French poun, paun reflects northern or eastern French dialects, where metaphony of the original pretonic front vowel has apparently resulted in a back vowel—unlike central French, where /ɛ/ was raised to /i/ and later lost syllabicity (hence Modern French pion). In Middle English—in at least the realization that has survived in Modern English—the vowel nucleus fell in with the au diphthong that arose from French an- plus a dental consonant. Compare pioneer entry 1, peon.

Note: The vowel of the Modern English word reflects an earlier diphthong that is the regular Anglo-French outcome of -an- plus a dental consonant, though textual evidence for pan in Anglo-French appears to be lacking. In Scots the word is attested as pawnd in 1431, several decades earlier than the first attestations in England, and forms with a final d still are found in Scotland in the eighteenth century. The earliest and apparently the sole Medieval Latin evidence for pandum in Britain is also in a Scottish text, from the twelfth century. As pan "pledge" in medieval French is identical with pan "piece of cloth, tail of a shirt" (see pane), it has been claimed that they are the same word, a piece of cloth having served as the token of a surety given to a creditor; the Germanic words would then have been borrowed from French. This would leave the final -t/-d of the Germanic words unexplained, however. Moreover, the Germanic words are attested earlier—eighth century for Old High German pfant, eleventh century for Old Saxon pand—while the French word is apparently first attested in 1214 (per Französisches etymologisches Wörterbuch), and from regions (French Flanders, Hainaut, Lorraine) in contact with Germanic speakers. The source of the Germanic word is uncertain—see discussion in Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen. If the word was a borrowing of Latin pondus "weight" (see pound entry 1), it must have taken place at a very early date, before the separation of a and o by quantity in proto-Germanic.