1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Paramount

PARAMOUNT (Anglo-Fr. paramont, up above, par à mont, up or on top of the mountain), superior, supreme, holding the highest authority, or being of the greatest importance. The word was first used, as a term of feudal law, of the lord, the “lord paramount,” who held his fief from no superior lord, and was thus opposed to “mesne lord,” one who held from a superior. To those who held their fiefs from one who was not a “lord paramount” was given the correlative term “paravail,” par à val, in the valley. The word was confused by English lawyers with “avail,” help, assistance, profit, and applied to the actual working tenant of the land, the lowest tenant or occupier.