Latin 'pax' gave us 'peace,' 'pay,' and 'propaganda' — ancient peace was about fastening agreements, not calm.
A Latin word meaning 'peace, treaty, agreement, tranquility,' and the source of English words relating to peace, agreement, and satisfaction.
From Proto-Italic *pāks, from the Proto-Indo-European root *paḱ- meaning 'to fasten, to fix, to agree.' The semantic development was from 'to fix or fasten (an agreement)' to 'a pact, a treaty' to 'peace.' The same PIE root produced Latin pangere ('to fix, to fasten, to agree upon'), pāctum ('a pact'), and pagina ('a page' — originally a column of writing
The word 'pay' comes from Latin pācāre ('to pacify, to make peaceful'), because in medieval usage, paying a debt was understood as 'pacifying' a creditor — settling an obligation to restore peace between debtor and lender. The Pacific Ocean was named by Magellan in 1521 — after emerging from the stormy Strait of Magellan into calm waters, he called it 'Mare Pacificum' ('Peaceful Sea'), using the Latin root pāx. The Pax Romana ('Roman Peace'), the roughly 200-year period of relative stability
Words closest in meaning, ranked by similarity