Etymologically the verb is generally believed to derive from post-classical Latin pausare (intransitive ‘to pause, take a break, rest’) influenced, both formally and semantically, by Latin ponere (transitive ‘to place, put’). However, there are, at the moment, no attestations of the pau- form in Anglo-Norman, nor is the sense ‘to pause, rest’ apparent. The English verb to pause, is only truly attested in post-medieval English from the sixteenth century. Thus, the confusion of paus-/pos- forms and transitive/intransitive senses, sometimes apparent in fifteenth-century Continental French, seems to be non-existent in English and extremely rare in Anglo-Norman (cf. comment to pose¹).

Ultimately, the proposed association with pausare seems questionable, as the Classical Latin verb ponere equally produced a pos- stem in its conjugation (posui - positus), which may well lie at the basis of the Anglo-Norman form.