pain

From Middle English peyne, payne, from Old French and Anglo-Norman peine, paine, from Latin poena (“punishment, pain”), from Ancient Greek ποινή (poinḗ, “bloodmoney, weregild, fine, price paid, penalty”).

Compare Danish pine, Norwegian Bokmål pine, German Pein, Dutch pijn, Afrikaans pyn. See also pine (the verb). Partly displaced native Old English sār (whence Modern English sore).

• paine (obsolete)

• enPR: pān, IPA^(key): /peɪn/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Audio (UK)

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• Rhymes: -eɪn
• Homophone: pane

pain (countable and uncountable, plural pains)

1. (countable and uncountable) An ache or bodily suffering, or an instance of this; an unpleasant sensation, resulting from a derangement of functions, disease, or injury by violence; hurt.

   The greatest difficulty lies in treating patients with chronic pain.

   I had to stop running when I started getting pains in my feet.

2. (uncountable) The condition or fact of suffering or anguish especially mental, as opposed to pleasure; torment; distress

   In the final analysis, pain is a fact of life.

   The pain of departure was difficult to bear.

3. (countable, from pain in the neck) An annoying person or thing.

   Your mother is a right pain.

4. (uncountable, dated) Suffering inflicted as punishment or penalty.

   You may not leave this room on pain of death.

   • 1629, Francis Bacon, An Advertisement Touching a Holy War:

     We will, by way of mulct or pain, lay it upon him.

   • 1690, [John] Dryden, Don Sebastian, King of Portugal: […], London: […] Jo. Hindmarsh, […], →OCLC, Act IV, page 105:

     Seb[astian]. […] [M]y duty, then, / To interpoſe; on pain of my diſpleasure, / Betwixt your Swords[.] / Dor[ax]. On pain of Infamy / He ſhould have diſobey'd.

5. (chiefly in the plural) Labour; effort; great care or trouble taken in doing something.

• (an annoying person or thing): pest
• See also Thesaurus:pain

• pleasure

• agony
• anguish
• pang
• neuropathic pain
• nociceptive pain
• phantom pain
• psychogenic pain

pain (third-person singular simple present pains, present participle paining, simple past and past participle pained)

1. (transitive) To hurt; to put to bodily uneasiness or anguish; to afflict with uneasy sensations of any degree of intensity; to torment; to torture.

   The wound pained him.

2. (transitive) To render uneasy in mind; to disquiet; to distress; to grieve.

   It pains me to say that I must let you go.

3. (transitive, obsolete) To inflict suffering upon as a penalty; to punish.
4. (intransitive, India) To feel pain; to hurt.

   Please help me, I am paining hard.

   • 2001, Sarah Caldwell, quoting C. Choondal, “Waves of Beauty, Rivers of Blood: Constructing the Goddess in Kerala”, in Tracy Pintchman, editor, Seeking Mahādevī: Constructing the Identities of the Hindu Great Goddess, page 104:

     Oh my head is aching, oh Lord Damodara [Visnu], give me "kazhi". The neck is paining, oh Lord Kamadeva give me relief. My chest is paining, oh Lord Madhava, give me relief.

   • 2009, Nithyananda Paramahamsa, Bliss Is the Goal and the Path, page 124:

     A lady visited the doctor, a general physician and complained of a lot of pain.
     The doctor asked her where she experienced pain.
     The lady touched her right knee and said, 'It is paining here doctor.'
     Then she touched her stomach and said, 'It is paining here too doctor.'

From Middle English payn (“a kind of pie with a soft crust”), from Old French pain (“bread”).

pain (plural pains)

1. (obsolete, cooking) Any of various breads stuffed with a filling.

   gammon pain; Spanish pain

• pain in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
• “pain”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
• pain at OneLook Dictionary Search

• APNI, NIPA, PANI, nipa, pian, pina, piña

From Proto-Oceanic *papine, from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *babinahi, from Proto-Austronesian *bahi.

pain

1. woman

• Malcolm Ross, Proto Oceanic and the Austronesian Languages of Western Melanesia, Pacific Linguistics, series C-98 (1988)

pain

1. inflection of pai:
   1. genitive singular
   2. instructive plural

• apin, pani, pian

From Old French pain, from Latin pānis, pānem.

• IPA^(key): /pɛ̃/

• Audio (FR)

  (file)

• Audio (Avignon)

  (file)

• Homophones: pains, peins, peint, peints, pin, pins

pain m (plural pains)

1. bread
2. piece of bread
3. food
   • 1830 Juvénal, Les Satires, translated into French verse by Barré de Jallais

     Sa nudité déplaît, sa détresse importune, / Et tous les jours, hélas ! à tout le monde en vain / Il demande une chambre, un habit et du pain.

     His nudity embarrasses, his distress importunes, / And all the days, alas! to everyone in vain / He ask a bedroom, clothes and foods.

4. bread-and-butter needs, basic sustenance; breadwinner
   • 1830 Juvénal, Les Satires, translated into French verse by Barré de Jallais

     Ce danseur, déployant une jambe soigneuse / À tenir l’équilibre, et la corde douteuse, / Trouve dans son talent des habits et du pain, / Et son art lui subjugue et le froid et la faim : […]

5. (informal) punch (a hit with the fist)
   • 2006, Maurice Léger, Moi, Antoinette Védrines, thanatopractrice et pilier de rugby, Publibook

     J’étais redescendue dare-dare, bien décidée à lui mettre un pain dans la tronche.

     I was redescended quickly, really steadfast to blow him a punch on his face.

6. a block (of ice, of salt, of soap …) with the shape and size of bread
7. (slang) (music) mistake during a performance (false note, forgot an intro, wrong solo, …)

• panier

• Haitian Creole: pen
• Karipúna Creole French: djipẽ
• → Farefare: pãanɛ
• ⇒ Khmer: នំប៉័ង (num pang)
• → Xârâcùù: pêê

• “pain”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

• pina

From Proto-Oceanic *papine, from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *babinahi, from Proto-Austronesian *bahi.

pain

1. woman

• Malcolm Ross, Proto Oceanic and the Austronesian Languages of Western Melanesia, Pacific Linguistics, series C-98 (1988)
• ABVD
• Gedaged Bible translation, Genesis 1:27: Tamol pain mai inaulak.

From Proto-Oceanic *papine, from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *babinahi, from Proto-Austronesian *bahi.

pain

1. woman

• Malcolm Ross, Proto Oceanic and the Austronesian Languages of Western Melanesia, Pacific Linguistics, series C-98 (1988)

• pôin (Guernsey)

From Old French pain.

• Audio (Jersey)

  (file)

pain m (plural pains)

1. (Jersey) bread

• gângne-pain (“breadwinner”)
• pain d'êpice (“gingerbread”)
• p'tit pain (“roll”)

From Latin pānis, pānem.

pain m (oblique plural painz, nominative singular painz, nominative plural pain)

1. bread

• French: pain (see there for further descendants)
• Norman: pain, pôin
• Walloon: pwin, pan
• → Middle English: payn, pain, paine, payn, pein
  • English: pain (obsolete)

From Proto-Oceanic *papine, from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *babinahi, from Proto-Austronesian *bahi.

pain

1. woman

• Malcolm Ross, Proto Oceanic and the Austronesian Languages of Western Melanesia, Pacific Linguistics, series C-98 (1988)

From Proto-Austronesian *paən (cf. Bikol Central paon).

• Hyphenation: pa‧in
• IPA^(key): /ˈpaʔin/, [ˈpa.ʔɪn]

pain

1. bait (for catching fish, rats, etc.)
2. decoy
3. nest egg

• ipain

• “pain”, in Pambansang Diksiyonaryo | Diksiyonaryo.ph, Manila: Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino, 2018

From Proto-Oceanic *papine, from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *babinahi, from Proto-Austronesian *bahi.

pain

1. woman

• Malcolm Ross, Proto Oceanic and the Austronesian Languages of Western Melanesia, Pacific Linguistics, series C-98 (1988)