Padlock.

[Kay]

Just wondering. Did the naming of the lock have anything to do with highway men sometimes known as Foot Pads? TIA.

[jno]

probably not. Pad is the sole of a foot (related to path), or to walk softly; a footpad was a robber on foot. (A highwayman might be a footpad, they didn't all ride horses.) Nobody seems to know where the pad in padlock came from, though one old book I have suggests it's related to a Norfolk word for a pannier - ie something that hangs down, the way a padlock hangs.