Reading this, I realized that a similar thing developed in German, my native tongue, but from a different root. As a noun, capital Paar refers to a pair of exactly two, like “ein Paar Schuhe”, or a couple (n.), like “das Paar”. As a pronoun, lowercase paar refers to a few or a couple of.

This leads to this weird situation where “ein Paar Socken” is exactly two socks, but “ein paar Socken” can be a few socks, like 2-7. The pronunciation is exactly the same, and both versions are in common use.