Note 45 — Chapter XVII · FOREIGN LINEAR MEASURES
Reading edition
In this ‘pawn’ (the spelling of which shows that English had already lost the a sound of the first vowel and had to represent it by aw) I see the fusion of two words etymologically different, the Italian palmo, L. palmus, and the Provençal pán, side, panel. See, in Chaps. IV and XXI, ‘The Pán of Marseilles.’