payne mayne, white bread of the finest quality; ‘Payne mayne, payn de bouche’, Palsgrave. ME. payndemayn (Chaucer, C. T. B. 1915); payman, ‘placencia’ (Voc. 788. 32). Anglo-F. pain demeine, Med. L. panis dominicus, lord’s bread, bread eaten by the master of the house; cp. L. vinum dominicum, Petronius, Sat. § 30. See [demain].
payre, to impair, make worse, spoil. Fitzherbert, Husbandry, § 4. 26; § 97. 3. See [appair].
paytrelle, ‘poitrel’, breastplate for a horse. Morte Arthur, leaf 119, back, 2; bk. vii, c. 17. Anglo-F. peitral (Moisy). See Dict. (s.v. Poitrel).
peace, to keep silence; ‘Peace, foolish woman. Duchess. I will not peace’, Richard II, v. 2. 80; ‘He peaste and couched while that we passed by’, Sackville, Mirror Mag., Induction, lxxii.
peak, to make a mean figure, to play a contemptible part. Hamlet, ii. 2. 594; peaking, sneaking, mean-spirited, Merry Wives, iii. 5. 71.
peak, to droop, to be sickly, Macbeth, i. 3. 23; Tusser, Husbandry, § 67. 27. The word ‘peaking’ is used in the sense of sickly, wasted away, in many parts of England and Scotland, see EDD. (s.v. Peak, vb.2 1 (2)). See [pick].
peak-goose, a dolt, a simpleton. Ascham, Scholemaster (ed. Arber, 54); Prophetess, iv. 3 (1 Guard); spelt pea-goose, Beaumont and Fl., Little French Lawyer, ii. 3 (Dinant); Cotgrave (s.v. Benet); Chapman, Mons. d’Olive, iii. 1 (Rhoderique).
peakish, remote, solitary; ‘Did house him in a peakish grange Within a forest great’, Warner, Alb. England, bk. viii, ch. 42, st. 2; ‘Snow on Peakish Hull’ (hill), Drayton, Pastorals, Ecl. 4 (Ballad of Dowsabel, st. 5); ‘A pelting grange that peakishly did stand’, Golding, tr. of Ovid, Met. vi. 521 (L. obscura). See NED., where ‘Peakish’ is shown to refer (probably) to the ‘Peak’ in Derbyshire.
pearl, a disease of the eye. Middleton, Span. Gipsy, ii. 1 (Costanza). In Scottish use (EDD.). ME. perle of þe eye, ‘glaucoma’ (Prompt.).
pease, pese, a pea. Spenser, Shep. Kal., Oct., 69; ‘A pese above a perle’, Surrey, The Lover excuseth himself, in Tottel’s Misc., p. 25; ‘Not worth two peason’, Surrey, Frailty of Beauty, id., p. 10; Peason, peas, Tusser, Husbandry, § 53, st. 9. ME. pese, ‘pisa’ (Prompt.); OE. pisa, piosa, a pea (Sweet).