The word was first recorded in English in 1531, from Latin. Hugh Latimer, an English clergyman, used it in a letter, doubting that the judges of his day were deeply confirmed in grace, or not capable of sin.
French had already used the word by the fifteenth century. Behind it lay a Late Latin adjective, built from a prefix meaning 'not', joined to a verb meaning 'to miss'.
The Latin verb is of uncertain origin. It may come from a lost word meaning 'having a defect in one's foot', and so once have meant 'to stumble'. That word would trace to a Proto-Indo-European root, *ped-, meaning 'foot'.
PAWN, the chess piece, and IMPEACH both entered English in the late fourteenth century, from Old French, and trace to a root meaning 'foot'. PAWN began as a foot soldier. IMPEACH comes from a Late Latin verb meaning 'to fetter'.
In 1620 Joseph Hall, a Doctor of Divinity, used the word in a book defending married clergy. He asked whether, if we honour a man, we must hold his pen to be incapable of error. By 1864 a treatise on logic used it to describe an argument that keeps every rule. Today it more commonly describes manners or taste that nobody could fault.
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