page [L16th] The page of a book goes back to Latin pagina ‘page’, from pangere ‘to fasten’. The connection between fastening and the page of a book is probably because pagina was originally used of a scroll, made up of strips of papyrus glued together, and then transferred to the page of a book when books replaced scrolls. Before the 16th century older forms, such as pagne, were in use. The other page [ME] is first found in the sense ‘youth, male of uncouth manners’ and comes via Old French from Greek paidíon ‘boy, lad’. Page boys at a wedding date from the late 19th century. Paidíon is also the source of the word-element paed- or ped found in words such as paediatrics ‘the medical care of children’ [M19], paedophile ‘child-lover’ [M20], and pedagogue [LME] formed from the Greek words for ‘child’ and ‘leader’, which was the word in ancient Greece for the slave who took a child to school, but became a term for a teacher in Latin. The Italian pedante ‘teacher’, which entered the language in the late 16th century as pedant may be from pedagogue. See also encyclopedia, pageant.