☼ Concept Map

''pace'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

↩ 🔳 🔳 🔳

Primary

⁀➴

''pace'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260708144405-00-⌔

pace - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

pace (plural paces)

  • A step.
    • A step taken with the foot. [from 14th c.]
    • The distance covered in a step (or sometimes two), either vaguely or according to various specific set measurements.1 [from 14th c.]
      • ✤ Even at the duel, standing 10 paces apart, he could have satisfied Aaron’s honor.
      • ✤ I have perambulated your field, and estimate its perimeter to be 219 paces.
  • A way of stepping.
    • A manner of walking, running or dancing; the rate or style of how someone moves with their feet. [from 14th c.]
      • ✤ Netherlands, one of the pre-tournament favourites, combined their undoubted guile, creativity, pace and attacking quality with midfield grit and organisation.2
    • Any of various gaits of a horse, specifically a 2-beat, lateral gait. [from 15th c.]
  • Speed or velocity in general. [from 15th c.]
    • ✤ Synonyms: tempo, rhythm
    • ✤ For with ſuch puiſſance and impetuous maine/Thoſe Champions broke on them, that forſt the fly,/Like ſcattered Sheepe, whenas the Shepherds ſwaine/A Lyon and a Tigre doth eſpye,/With greedy pace forth ruſhing from the foreſt nye.3
    • ✤ The fastest women runners can run a mile in well under five minutes, but in order to reach that goal they’ve had to train at a much slower pace over thousands of miles.4
  • (cricket) A measure of the hardness of a pitch and of the tendency of a cricket ball to maintain its speed after bouncing. [from 19th c.]
    • ✤ He didn’t bowl a lot of pace in the first T20I.
  • (collective) A group of donkeys.
    • ✤ […] but at Broadstairs and other places along the coast, a pace of donkeys stood on the sea-shore expectant (at least, their owners were expectant) of children clamouring to ride.5
    • ✤ A pace of donkeys fans out in different directions.6
    • ✤ Like a small farm, the lighthouse compound had its chattering of chicks, pace of donkeys, troop of horses, and fold of sheep.7
  • (obsolete) A passage, a route.
    • (obsolete) One’s journey or route. [14th–18th c.]
    • (obsolete) A passage through difficult terrain; a mountain pass or route vulnerable to ambush etc. [14th–17th c.]
      • ✤ But when she saw them gone she forward went,/As lay her journey, through that perlous Pace […].8
    • (obsolete) An aisle in a church. [15th–19th c.]

Adjective

pace (not comparable)

  • (cricket) Describing a bowler who bowls fast balls.

Verb

pace (third-person singular simple present paces, present participle pacing, simple past and past participle paced)

  • To walk back and forth in a small distance.
    • ✤ Groups of men, in all imaginable attitudes, were lying, standing, sitting, or pacing up and down.9
    • ✤ As we stood waiting for the departure time with the setting sun twinkling on the great brass dome of our 2-4-0, the sound of church bells was the only one apart from the measured tread of the guard slowly pacing towards his van, and, standing at an open window, I more than once heard the fireman’s “Right away!” to his mate in acknowledgement of a desultory wave of the unfurled green flag.10
  • To walk along or through sth with regular strides.
  • To set the speed.
    • ✤ Synonym: set the pace
    • ✤ I helped her train for the marathon by pacing her on a bike.
    • ✤ The clubs in London, Manchester, Birmingham, etc., hold various track meetings for races varying from one mile to fifty miles, the longer distances being sometimes paced by tandems.11
  • To measure by walking.

Preposition

pace

  • (formal) With all due respect to.
    • ✤ She is marvelous here, but he (pace many critics) is no bumpkin12

Noun

pace (plural paces)

  • Synonym of Easter.

Etymology 1

From Middle English pase, from Anglo-Norman pas, Old French pas, and their source, Latin passus. Doublet of pas and fathom; compare also pass. Cognate with pass, Spanish pasear, paso.

Pronunciation

  • (UK, US) IPA: /peɪs/
  • Audio (US): 🔊
  • Audio (Australian): 🔊
  • Rhymes: -eɪs

Etymology 2

From Latin pāce (“in peace”), ablative form of pāx (“peace”).

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈpætʃeɪ/, /ˈpɑːtʃeɪ/, /ˈpeɪsiː/
  • Audio (General American): 🔊

Etymology 3

Alteration of archaic Pasch.

Pronunciation

  • IPA: /peɪs/

Printed 2026-07-08.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. How Many? A Dictionary of Units of Measurement: English Customary Weights and Measures, © Russ Rowlett and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (§: Distance, № 6) ↩

  2. 2012 June 9, Owen Phillips, “Euro 2012: Netherlands 0-1 Denmark”, in BBC Sport ‎: ↩

  3. 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto IX”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 14, page 311: ↩

  4. 1983, Kathryn Lance, Running for Health, Bantam, →ISBN: ↩

  5. 1952, G. B. Stern, The Donkey Shoe, The Macmillan Company, published 1952, page 29: ↩

  6. 2006 November 9, “Drop the dead donkeys”, in The Economist: ↩

  7. 2007, Elinor De Wire, The Lightkeepers’ Menagerie: Stories of Animals at Lighthouses, Pineapple Press, published 2007, →ISBN, page 200: ↩

  8. 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC: ↩

  9. 1874, Marcus Clarke, For the Term of His Natural Life, Chapter V: ↩

  10. 1955 January, R. S. McNaught, “From the Severn to the Mersey by Great Western”, in Railway Magazine, page 19: ↩

  11. 1921, W. F. Grew, The Cycle Industry, London, page 70: ↩

  12. 1998, Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human: ↩

Link to original

Secondary

• • •