Etymology Dictionary

UMPIRE,  a third person called in to decide a dispute between two others.  (F.,—L.)   This curious word has lost initial n, and stands for numpire, once a common form.   See remarks under the letter N.   Spelt umpire in L. L. L. i. I. 170.   M. E.  nompere or noumpere.   'N(o)wmpere, or owmpere, Arbiter;' Prompt. Parv.   Spelt noumpere, nounpere, nounpier, P. Plowman, B. v. 337; nompeyr, id. C. vii. 388; noumpere, id. A. v. 181.   In Wyclif, Prologue to Romans, ed. Forshall and Madden, p. 302, l. 24, we have noumpere, where six MSS. read vmpere.   It also occurs, spelt nompere, in the Testament of Love, pr. in Chaucer's Works, ed. 1561, fol. 287.   Tyrwhitt shews (in his Glossary to Chaucer) that the Lat. impar was sometimes used in the sense of arbitrator, and rightly suggests a connection with mod. F. nonpair, odd.   β. The M. E. nompere exactly represents the O. F. form nomper, as it would have been spelt in the 14th century.   Later, it occurs in Cotgrave as nompair, 'peerless, also odde;' and an earlier spelling nonper is given by Roquefort, with the sense of peerless.   It is simply a compound of F. non, not, and O. F. per, a peer, an equal; from Lat. non, not, and par, equal; see Non- and Peer (1).   γ. The O. F. nonper became nomper as a matter of course, since n before p regularly becomes m, as in hamper = hanaper; see Hamper (2).   It may also be noted that it is not the only M. E. word in which the same F. prefix occurs, since we also have M. E. nonpower, i.e. lack of power, in P. Plowman, C. xx. 292, spelt nounpower, noumpower, and even vnpower.   The last form suggests that the loss of initial n was due to some confusion between the F. non and E. un-, with much the same negative sense.   Hence a numpire or an umpire was a non-peer or an un-peer, orig. the former.   δ. The sense is curious; but the use of Lat. impar, lit. odd, in the sense of arbitrator or umpire sufficiently explains it; the umpire is the odd man, the third man, called in to settle a dispute between two others.   It may also be noted that pair and peer are doublets, as already shewn.