Pawn

How to spell pawn

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce pawn

What does pawn mean?

1. nounThe smallest and most numerous chess piece, of lowest individual value.
2. verbTo leave a valuable item with a lender as security in exchange for borrowed money.
3. nounA person who is used or controlled by more powerful people for their own purposes.

Pawn in a sentence

• noun

  He advanced a pawn to open the centre of the board.

• verb

  She had to pawn her watch to cover the rent that month.

• noun

  The junior clerk felt like a pawn in the executives' power struggle.

• noun

  Sacrificing a pawn early can win a stronger position later.

• verb

  During hard times people would pawn jewellery and reclaim it on payday.

• noun

  Investigators argued he was merely a pawn for the real organisers.

Where does pawn come from?

Language of origin: French

Pawn actually carries two separate origins that fell together in spelling and sound. The chess piece comes through Anglo-French from the Medieval Latin pedonem, meaning 'foot soldier', which traces back to Latin pes 'foot'; the lowly infantryman on the board kept that sense of a humble figure moved about by others, which is why a person manipulated by stronger forces is still called a pawn. The other pawn, meaning something handed over as security for a loan, came into English in the 1400s from Old French pan, meaning a pledge or surety, itself rooted in a Germanic word for a piece of cloth or guarantee. Over time English collapsed both words into the same four letters and the same sound, so the chess piece, the figurative tool, and the act of pledging all wear the spelling 'pawn'. The same Latin pes 'foot' lives on in pedal, pedestrian, and pedestal, a useful reminder that the chess pawn is the foot soldier of the game.

How the word is built

• pawn (whole word; chess sense from Latin pedonem 'foot soldier'; pledge sense from Old French pan 'security')