pais

At its plainest the word names a young person by their age and their place in a household: a child. It reaches from a newborn up through boyhood, and it is not limited to males. Luke uses it just as readily for Jairus's young daughter as the Gospels use it for boys, so a translator has to decide from the context whether to say boy or girl.

Because the word marks someone as young and dependent, it often appears in scenes of rescue or healing: the boy freed from a tormenting spirit, the official's son restored, the young man Eutychus brought back alive. In each the point is the same, a child under the care of others whose life hangs on what a stronger person does.

This is the same word that can also mean servant (see the second meaning). The two ideas sit close together because in the ancient world a servant, like a child, was a dependent in the household under someone else's authority.

The same word names a servant, and it does so with a softer feel than the ordinary word for a slave. A slave was defined by bondage and ownership; this word pictures the servant as a member of the household, a dependent under the master's roof much as a child would be. So it is used for the servants a king or a wealthy man keeps about him, and for the household staff a master expects to find at their work.

The word rises to its highest use as a title of honor: God's servant. The Hebrew scriptures called David, the nation of Israel, and above all a coming chosen one the servant of the LORD, and the New Testament picks up that very word. David is God's servant, Israel is God's servant, and the first Christian preaching repeatedly calls Jesus God's holy servant.

This honored use is where translation gets hard. Because the one word can mean either child or servant, older English Bibles sometimes said child Jesus where newer ones say Servant, and the deliberate echo of the servant of the LORD in Isaiah can be lost either way.