Origin and history of pail

"sheet of paper, one side of a printed or written leaf of a book or pamphlet," 1580s, from French page, from Old French pagene "page, text" (12c.), from Latin pagina "page, leaf of paper, strip of papyrus fastened to others," related to pagella "small page," from pangere "to fasten" (from PIE root *pag- "to fasten").

Earlier pagine (c. 1200), directly from Old French or Latin. The word is usually said to be from the notion of individual sheets of paper "fastened" into a book. Ayto and Watkins offer an alternative theory: vines fastened by stakes and formed into a trellis, which led to sense of "columns of writing on a scroll." When books replaced scrolls, the word continued to be used. Related: Paginal.

Page-turner "book that one can't put down" is from 1974; earlier (by 1959) an apparatus or person who turns the pages of an open book, as for a performing musician.

[S]ome confound folio and page ; when as a folio or leaf, properly comprehends two pages; others cite a Book by folio's, when it is in a large volume; and by pages, when in a small [Blount's "Glossographia," 1656].

"broad, shallow vessel of metal used for domestic purposes," Middle English panne, from Old English panne, earlier ponne (Mercian) "pan," from Proto-Germanic *panno "pan" (source also of Old Norse panna, Old Frisian panne, Middle Dutch panne, Dutch pan, Old Low German panna, Old High German phanna, German pfanne), probably an early borrowing (4c. or 5c.) from Vulgar Latin *patna. This is supposed to be from Latin patina "shallow pan, dish, stew-pan," from Greek patane "plate, dish," from PIE *pet-ano-, from root *pete- "to spread."

But both the Latin and Germanic words might be from a substrate language [Boutkan]. Irish panna probably is from English, and Lithuanian panė is from German.

The word has been used of any hollow thing shaped somewhat like a pan; the sense of "head, top of the head" is by c. 1300. It was used of pan-shaped parts of mechanical apparatus from c. 1590; hence flash in the pan (see flash (n.1)), a figurative use from early firearms, where a pan held the priming (and the gunpowder might "flash," but no shot ensue). To go out of the (frying) pan into the fire "escape one evil only to fall into a worse" is in Spenser (1596).

"pail such as working men used to carry their lunches to job sites," by 1811, from lunch (n.) + pail (n.). As an adjective, indicating working-class men or values, by 1990s, also lunch-bucket (1873 in the literal se4nse). Compare lunch-box (1864); lunch-basket (1840).