Other forms: pardoned, pardons, pardoning
Pardon has two lives. In everyday speech it is what you say when you did not hear something — Pardon? — or when you have bumped into somebody. In law it is an official act cancelling a punishment.
The everyday use is worth care because it is a class marker in Britain: Pardon? and Sorry? and What? are all used, and opinions about which is polite are strong and contradictory. Sorry? is the safest. I beg your pardon has two tones — a genuine apology, and an indignant one meaning how dare you — and the difference is entirely in the voice. The legal sense is formal and specific: a pardon wipes the punishment, not the conviction.
1nounpardonSaid as a question when you did not hear something.
“Pardon? I did not catch that.”
2verbforgiveTo forgive somebody.
“Pardon me for asking, but how much did it cost?”
3nounofficialAn official cancelling of a legal punishment.
“He received a pardon forty years after the trial.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
pardon is an act of forgiving.
Latin perdonare is per-, thoroughly, plus donare, to give — to give completely, to give away. Forgiving and giving are the same act in most European languages, and pardon is the Latin half of the pair whose Germanic half is forgive.
Proto-Indo-European
*gʰebʰ-
Old French
pardoner
Middle English
pardonen
English, today
pardon
From Middle English pardonen, from Old French pardoner. From Middle English pardonen, from Old French pardoner (modern French pardonner), from Latin perdono, from per- + dono, possibly a calque (if not vice-versa) of a gem word represented by Frankish firgeban (“to forgive, give up completely”), from fir- + geban. Akin to Old High German fargeban, firgeban (“to forgive”), Old English forġiefan (“to forgive”). More at forgive.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA