pair

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

• enPR: pâr, IPA^(key): /pɛə(ɹ)/

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• Rhymes: -ɛə(r)
• Homophones: pare, pear

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 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. (rowing) A boat for two sweep rowers.
10. (slang) A pair of breasts

    She's got a gorgeous pair.

11. (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.
12. 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.

13. (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.

14. (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.

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.

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

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

1. (transitive) To group into one or more 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.

   • 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.

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.

• parity

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

• couple

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?)

• PIRA, RIPA, pari-, raip

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

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

1. to digest

   Synonym: digerir

2. to handle, to cope with

• “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.

From Latin par (“equal”).

• IPA^(key): /pɛʁ/

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

1. (of a number) even

• impair

• parité

pair m (plural pairs)

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

• pari m

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

• pari, pria, ripa

pair

1. Alternative form of paire

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

From Latin pirum.

pair m (plural pairs)

1. (Rumantsch Grischun, Puter, Vallader) pear

• paira
• pairer