pay - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

Clipping of English Paya.

pay

  1. (international standards) ISO 639-3 language code for Pech.

From Middle English payen, from Old French paiier (“pay”), from Medieval Latin pācāre (“to settle, satisfy”) from Latin pācāre (“to pacify”). In this sense, displaced native Old English ġield (“pay”) and ġieldan (“to pay”), whence Modern English yield.

pay (third-person singular simple present pays, present participle paying, simple past and past participle paid or (obsolete) payed)

  1. (ambitransitive) To give money or other compensation to in exchange for goods or services.
    How much will the job pay?
    he paid him to clean the place up
    he paid her off the books and in kind where possible
    • 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XVII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:
      This time was most dreadful for Lilian. Thrown on her own resources and almost penniless, she maintained herself and paid the rent of a wretched room near the hospital by working as a charwoman, sempstress, anything.
    • 2012, BioWare, Mass Effect 3, Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →OCLC, PC, scene: Normandy SR-2:
      Admiral Hackett: You can pay a soldier to fire a gun. You can pay him to charge the enemy. But you can't pay him to believe.
    • 2013 June 21, Oliver Burkeman, “The tao of tech”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 2, page 48:
      The dirty secret of the internet is that all this distraction and interruption is immensely profitable. Web companies like to boast about […] and so on. But the real way to build a successful online business is to be better than your rivals at undermining people's control of their own attention. Partly, this is a result of how online advertising has traditionally worked: advertisers pay for clicks, and a click is a click, however it's obtained.
  2. (ambitransitive) To discharge, as a debt or other obligation, by giving or doing what is due or required.
    she offered to pay the bill
    he has paid his debt to society
    • 2013 June 22, “T time”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8841, page 68:
      Yet in “Through a Latte, Darkly”, a new study of how Starbucks has largely avoided paying tax in Britain, Edward Kleinbard […] shows that current tax rules make it easy for all sorts of firms to generate what he calls “stateless income”: […]. In Starbucks’s case, the firm has in effect turned the process of making an expensive cup of coffee into intellectual property.
  3. (transitive) To be profitable for.
    It didn't pay him to keep the store open any more.
  4. (transitive) To yield as a benefit.
    Synonyms: yield, return
    to pay dividends or interest
  5. (transitive) To give (something else than money).
    to pay attention
    • c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “A Midsommer Nights Dreame”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i]:
      not paying me a welcome
    • 1909 September 9, Archibald Marshall [pseudonym; Arthur Hammond Marshall], “A Court Ball”, in The Squire’s Daughter, London: Methuen & Co. […], →OCLC, page 9:
      They stayed together during three dances, went out on to the terrace, explored wherever they were permitted to explore, paid two visits to the buffet, and enjoyed themselves much in the same way as if they had been school-children surreptitiously breaking loose from an assembly of grown-ups.
  6. (intransitive) To be profitable or worth the effort.
    crime doesn’t pay
    it will pay to wait
  7. (intransitive) To discharge an obligation or debt.
    He was allowed to go as soon as he paid.
  8. (intransitive) To suffer consequences.
    He paid for his fun in the sun with a terrible sunburn.
  9. (transitive) To admit that a joke, punchline, etc., was funny.
    • 1996, Jon Byrell, Lairs, Urgers and Coat-Tuggers, Sydney: Ironbark, page 294:
      Sutho took a pull at his Johnny Walker and Coke and laughed that trademark laugh of his and said: `Okay. I'll pay that all right.'

Conjugation of pay

infinitive (to) pay
present tense past tense
1st-person singular pay paid, payed†
2nd-person singular pay, payest† paid, paidest†, paidst†, payed†, payedst†
3rd-person singular pays, payeth† paid, payed†
plural pay
subjunctive pay paid, payed†
imperative pay —
participles paying paid, payed†

to give money in exchange for goods or services

to give (e.g. attention)

to be profitable

intransitive: to suffer consequences

Translations to be checked

pay (countable and uncountable, plural pays)

  1. Money given in return for work; salary or wages.
    Many employers have rules designed to keep employees from comparing their pays.
  2. (countable, rare) A paying job; a paying concern.
    • 1950, Norman Lindsay, Dust or Polish?, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 36:
      "You can if you like. I'll drop in each day to see how she gets on." "Oh, will you? That's a relief. All the same, I wouldn't say she was a very good pay, if you spend too much time on her." "Oh, bad pays make up half a doctor's job."

money given in return for work — see also payment

pay (not comparable)

  1. Operable or accessible on deposit of coins.
    pay toilet
  2. Pertaining to or requiring payment.
    pay television

operable or accessible on deposit of coins

From Old French peier, from Latin picāre (“to cover with pitch”).

pay (third-person singular simple present pays, present participle paying, simple past and past participle payed or paid)

  1. (nautical, transitive) To cover (the bottom of a vessel, a seam, a spar, etc.) with tar or pitch, or a waterproof composition of tallow, resin, etc.; to smear.

to cover with a waterproof substance

pay

  1. (Mpakwithi) forehead
  2. (Mpakwithi) face

According to Nişanyan, from Persian پای (pây, “foot”), with the sense ”share” originating from the Persian expression borrowed into Old Anatolian Turkish بای برابر (pây-berâber, “equally, to the same proportion”, literally “equal foot”). The word is present in its modern sense in XIVth century Book of Dede Korkut. The non-Oghuz Turkic cognates, such as Kirgiz and Yakut пай (pay, “share”) are, according to Nişanyan, a borrowing from the Ottoman Turkish پای, via Russian пай (paj). However it is more possibly borrowed from Middle Chinese 派 (pʰaiH) as early as 7th century and inherited by later Turkic languages.

pay (definite accusative payı, plural paylar)

  1. share
  2. portion

From English pi, Ancient Greek πεῖ (peî).

pay

  1. the name of the sixteenth letter of the Classical and Modern Greek alphabets and the seventeenth in Old Greek
  2. (mathematics) an irrational and transcendental constant representing the ratio of the circumference of a Euclidean circle to its diameter; approximately 3.14159265358979323846264338327950; usually written π

pay

  1. to guide

pay (Kur-itan spelling ᜉᜌ᜔)

  1. still; yet; more

From Proto-Mayan *pahar.

pay

  1. skunk

pay

  1. A goat

pay

  1. moon

pay

  1. too

From Turkish pay.

pay ?

  1. share

Old Galician-Portuguese

[edit]

From padre, from Latin patrem (“father”), from Proto-Indo-European *ph₂tḗr.

pay m (plural pays)

  1. (hypocoristic, usually childish) papa, dad, father

pay m (plural pays)

  1. obsolete spelling of pai

pay

  1. he, she, it.

Sierra Negra Nahuatl

[edit]

pay

  1. father

Borrowed from English pie.

pay m (plural pays)

  1. (Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Peru) pie (food)
  2. (Panama, slang, by analogy from sense 1) A highly attractive person, typically, but not exclusively, referring to a female; a bombshell. (Compare English snack)

From Ottoman Turkish پای (pay), ultimately from Middle Chinese 派 (pài, “to hand out, distribute”).

pay (definite accusative payı, plural paylar)

  1. portion
  2. (arithmetic) numerator