Other forms: paras
A para is a soldier of an airborne regiment. Serve with the paras, an ex-para, the paras went in.
It is clipped British army slang, always used with the definite article in the plural: the Paras. Selection is famously brutal, and the badge is the winged parachute. Para is also used more loosely in journalism for a paragraph.
1nounparaA soldier of an airborne regiment.
“Her brother is a para and has made dozens of jumps from military planes.”
para is a soldier.
A clipping of paratrooper, from parachute plus trooper, in British army use from the 1940s.
Persian
پاره
ota
پاره
Serbo-Croatian
pàra//па̀ра
English, today
para
Borrowed from Serbo-Croatian pàra//па̀ра, from ota پاره, from Persian پاره.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA