price

Price comes from Middle English price, meaning "price, prize, value, excellence," borrowed from Old French pris or preis, which traces back to Latin pretium, meaning "worth, price, money spent, wages, reward."

The Middle English sense already carried both the idea of a cost and the idea of value or excellence, a double meaning that survives faintly whenever we call something "priceless" not because it costs nothing but because it's beyond cost.

It shares its Latin root pretium with praise, precious, appraise, appreciate, and depreciate — all words built around the idea of judging or assigning worth.