Payne

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A family name borne by many people across English-speaking countries ; an old variant spelling of the word meaning physical or emotional suffering
2. A common surname found in English-speaking places ; a obsolete form of the noun for distress, hurt, or suffering used in older texts
3. A hereditary family name carried by numerous individuals ; a former spelling of the word for bodily or mental hurt that appears in old literature

Etymology: "Payne" is an obsolete spelling of "pain", and the two share a Latin root with a striking legal background. The Latin "poena" meant "punishment" as well as "pain", and that dual sense comes from the earlier Greek "poinē", which meant "bloodmoney", the payment made to a victim's family to settle a wrong. Pain, in other words, began as a price exacted for an injury before it became the feeling of hurt itself. The word reached English through Middle English "peyne" and "payne", borrowed from Old French and Anglo-Norman "peine" and "paine". It is a doublet of "peine", meaning that the two English words are separate borrowings of the same Latin source, one of which kept the sense of penalty and suffering. Old English had its own word for physical hurt, "sār", which survives as "sore", but "pain" gradually displaced it.