pageant [LME] This word had two meanings in Middle English, either a religious play or the moveable platform on which it was performed. It seems to have come via Anglo-Norman from Latin pagina, the source of *page, but there is some debate as to how the meaning has changed. It may be from the idea that a play is performed from something written in a manuscript, or it may go back to the Latin source of pagina, pangere ‘to fasten’, referring to the putting together of the temporary stage. The modern sense of a showy parade is not found before the early 19th century.