pair

See also: Pair

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)/
  • Audio (US)(file)
  • 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.
    • 2013 June 14, Jonathan Freedland, “Obama's once hip brand is now tainted”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 1, page 18:
      Where we once sent love letters in a sealed envelope, or stuck photographs of our children in a family album, now such private material is despatched to servers and clouds operated by people we don't know and will never meet. Perhaps we assume that our name, address and search preferences will be viewed by some unseen pair of corporate eyes, probably not human, and don't mind that much.
    I couldn't decide which of the pair of designer shirts I preferred, so I bought the pair.
  2. Two people in a relationship, partnership (especially sexual) or friendship.
    Spouses should make a great pair.
  3. Used with binary nouns (often in the plural to indicate multiple instances, since such nouns are plural only)
    a pair of scissors; two pairs of spectacles; several pairs of jeans
  4. A couple of working animals attached to work together, as by a yoke.
    A pair is harder to drive than two mounts with separate riders.
  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
    They turned a pair to end the fifth.
  8. (baseball, informal) A doubleheader, two games played on the same day between the same teams
    The Pirates took a pair from the Phillies.
  9. (slang) A pair of breasts
    She's got a gorgeous pair.
  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
Derived terms
Translations
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#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
    • 2015, Microsoft, “How-to: Keyboards”, in http://www.microsoft.com‎, retrieved 2015-02-21:
      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

See also

Poker hands in English · poker hands (layout · text)
high card pair two pair three of a kind straight
flush full house four of a kind straight flush royal flush
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

Catalan

Verb

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

  1. to digest
  2. to handle, to cope with

Conjugation

Synonyms

French

Etymology

From Latin par (“equal”).

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /pɛʁ/
  • audio(file)

Adjective

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

  1. (of a number) even

Antonyms

Noun

pair m (plural pairs)

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

Antonyms

Further reading

Anagrams

Romansch

Alternative forms

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

Etymology

From Latin pirum.

Noun

pair m (plural pairs)

  1. (Rumantsch Grischun, Puter, Vallader) pear
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