Middle English: from Old French paste(e), based on late Latin pasta 'paste'.

• paste from Middle English:

  Italian pasta still retains a sophistication that the humble British pasty does not have, yet pasta (late 19th century), pasty (Middle English), and paste all go back through Latin to Greek pastai ‘barley porridge’ from pastos ‘to sprinkle, to salt’. The earliest use of paste in English was to mean ‘pastry’; pastry took over the sense in the 15th century. The sense ‘glue’ emerged in the later Middle Ages from the use of flour and water as an adhesive. Other words from the same root are pastel (mid 17th century); patty (mid 17th century); and the French equivalent paté (mid 18th century). Italian developed the form pasticcio for ‘pie’, which was also used as a term for a ‘hotchpotch, mixture’ and came into English via French as pastiche in the late 19th century. Pastrami (early 20th century) may be a more distant relative.