pair

English Online Dictionary. What means pair‎? What does pair mean?

English

Etymology 1

From Middle English paire, from Old French paire, from Latin paria (“equals”), neuter plural of pār.

Pronunciation

• enPR: pâr, IPA^(key): /pɛə(ɹ)/
• Rhymes: -ɛə(r)
• Homophones: pare, pear

Noun

pair (plural pairs or pair)

1. Two similar or identical things taken together; often followed by of.
   • Charles Dickens, The Private Theatricals (in Sketches by Boz)

     Everybody sat down; the curtain shook, rose sufficiently high to display several pair of yellow boots paddling about, and there it remained.

2. Two people in a relationship, partnership or friendship.

3. Used with binary nouns (often in the plural to indicate multiple instances, since such nouns are plural only)

4. A couple of working animals attached to work together, as by a yoke.

5. (card games) A poker hand that contains two cards of identical rank, which cannot also count as a better hand.
6. (cricket) A score of zero runs (a duck) in both innings of a two-innings match
7. (baseball, informal) A double play, two outs recorded in one play

8. (baseball, informal) A doubleheader, two games played on the same day between the same teams

9. (slang) A pair of breasts

10. (Australia, politics) The exclusion of one member of a parliamentary party from a vote, if a member of the other party is absent for important personal reasons.
11. Two members of opposite parties or opinion, as in a parliamentary body, who mutually agree not to vote on a given question, or on issues of a party nature during a specified time.

    There were two pairs on the final vote.

12. (archaic) A number of things resembling one another, or belonging together; a set.
    • Charles Dickens

      plunging myself into poverty and shabbiness and love in one room up three pair of stairs

    • Beaumont and Fletcher

      Two crowns in my pocket, two pair of cards.

13. (kinematics) In a mechanism, two elements, or bodies, which are so applied to each other as to mutually constrain relative motion; named in accordance with the motion it permits, as in turning pair, sliding pair, twisting pair.

Usage notes

In older texts like "A Key to Joyce's Arithmetic" (1808), the plural form for the word pair is pair, but the tendency, these days, is to use the form pairs to mark plurality. That is, a native English speaker, back in the early 19th century, would say 20 pair of shoes, as opposed to today's 20 pairs of shoes. But still, both forms are correct, even though the former is quite archaic.

Synonyms

• two objects in a group: duo, dyad, couple, brace, twosome, duplet
• (pair of breasts): See also Thesaurus:breasts

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

pair (third-person singular simple present pairs, present participle pairing, simple past and past participle paired)

1. (transitive) To group into sets of two.
   • Alexander Pope

     Glossy jet is paired with shining white.

   The wedding guests were paired boy/girl and groom's party/bride's party.

2. (transitive) To bring two (animals, notably dogs) together for mating.
3. (politics, slang) To engage (oneself) with another of opposite opinions not to vote on a particular question or class of questions.
4. (intransitive) To suit; to fit, as a counterpart.
   • Rowe

     My heart was made to fit and pair with thine.

5. (computing) to form wireless connection between to devices

   • If your computer has a built-in, non-Microsoft transceiver, you can pair the device directly to the computer by using your computer’s Bluetooth software configuration program but without using the Microsoft Bluetooth transceiver.

Derived terms

Related terms

• parity

See also

• couple

Translations

Etymology 2

Verb

pair (third-person singular simple present pairs, present participle pairing, simple past and past participle paired)

1. (obsolete) To impair.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Spenser to this entry?)

Anagrams

• PIRA, RIPA, pari-, raip

---

Catalan

Pronunciation

• (Balearic, Central) IPA^(key): /pəˈi/
• (Valencian) IPA^(key): /paˈiɾ/
• Rhymes: -i(ɾ)

Verb

pair (first-person singular present paeixo, past participle paït)

1. to digest

   Synonym: digerir

2. to handle, to cope with

Conjugation

Further reading

• “pair” in Diccionari de la llengua catalana, segona edició, Institut d’Estudis Catalans.
• “pair” in Gran Diccionari de la Llengua Catalana, Grup Enciclopèdia Catalana.
• “pair” in Diccionari normatiu valencià, Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua.
• “pair” in Diccionari català-valencià-balear, Antoni Maria Alcover and Francesc de Borja Moll, 1962.

---

French

Etymology

From Latin par (“equal”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /pɛʁ/

Adjective

pair (feminine singular paire, masculine plural pairs, feminine plural paires)

1. (of a number) even

Antonyms

• impair

Related terms

• parité

Noun

pair m (plural pairs)

1. A peer, high nobleman/vassal (as in peer of the realm)

Antonyms

• pari m

Further reading

• “pair” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Anagrams

• pari, pria, ripa

---

Romansch

Alternative forms

• (Sursilvan, Sutsilvan) pér
• (Surmiran) peir

Etymology

From Latin pirum.

Noun

pair m (plural pairs)

1. (Rumantsch Grischun, Puter, Vallader) pear

Related terms

• paira
• pairer