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say it: pawn
pawn is a noun and verb meaning "an article deposited as security". It carries 5 recorded senses.
an article deposited as security
a person used by another to gain an end
(chess) the least powerful piece; moves only forward and captures only to the side; it can be promoted to a more powerful piece if it reaches the 8th rank
chess
borrowing and leaving an article as security for repayment of the loan
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for pawn come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.