peace [ME] Peace is from Old French pais, from Latin pax ‘peace’. The phrase no peace for the wicked comes from Isaiah 48:22 ‘There is no peace to the wicked, saith the Lord’. In legal texts, the word pacific [LME], from the same root, still retains its early meaning ‘free from strife, peaceful’. In 1520 the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan passed through the stormy waters of the strait between what is now Tierra Del Fuego and mainland Chile. To his relief he emerged to calm seas, so called the ocean Mar Pacifico ‘tranquil sea’. The treacherous sound he passed through is still the Strait of Magellan. Pacify [LME] and pacifism [E20th] go back to the same root, as does appease [ME], literally ‘bring to a peaceful state’. See also pay.