Par

How to spell par

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce par

What does par mean?

1. nounThe usual or expected level or standard against which something is measured.
2. nounThe number of strokes a skilled golfer is expected to need for a hole or course.
3. nounThe face value of a share, bond, or currency, as opposed to its market price.

Par in a sentence

• The new recruit's work was well below par this week.

• The long fourth hole has a par of five.

• The bond was issued at par and later traded at a premium.

• Her recovery is on a par with what the doctors predicted.

• She finished the round two strokes under par.

• The two currencies traded close to par for most of the year.

Where does par come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Par comes directly from the Latin word par, which simply meant 'equal' or 'a pair', describing two things of the same value or rank. English took it over in the sixteenth century, first in commercial and financial talk, where being 'at par' meant a coin or bill was worth exactly its stated face value, neither more nor less. From that idea of an established equal standard, the word broadened into the general sense of a normal or expected level, surviving in phrases like 'on a par with' and 'below par'. The golfing use, meaning the fixed number of strokes a skilled player should need, grew from the same notion of a benchmark standard and became popular in the late nineteenth century. The same Latin root sits inside familiar relatives such as 'pair', 'parity' and 'compare', all of them turning on the idea of equalness, and the spelling stays short and unchanged because it was borrowed whole rather than reshaped.

How the word is built

• par (Latin par: equal)