pay

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pay

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• (Received Pronunciation, General American) enPR: pā, IPA^(key): /peɪ/,

• Audio (General American):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪ

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. (transitive) To give money or other compensation to in exchange for goods or services.

   he paid him to clean the place up

   he paid her off the books and in kind where possible

   • 1918, W B 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. (transitive, intransitive) 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

   • 1611, The Holy Bible,  (King James Version), London: Robert Barker, , →OCLC, Psalms 37:21:

     The wicked borroweth, and payeth not again.

   • 1594, William Shakespeare, Lucrece (First Quarto)‎, London: Richard Field, for Iohn Harrison, , →OCLC:

     The petty ſtreames that paie a dailie det / To their ſalt ſoveraigne with their freſh fals haſt, / Adde to his flowe, but alter not his taſt.

   • 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 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 Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, :

     not paying me a welcome

   • 1909, Archibald Marshall [pseudonym; Arthur Hammond Marshall], “A Court Ball”, in The Squire’s Daughter, New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead and Company, published 1919, →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.

5. (intransitive) To be profitable or worth the effort.

   crime doesn’t pay

   it will pay to wait

6. (intransitive) To discharge an obligation or debt.

   He was allowed to go as soon as he paid.

7. (intransitive) To suffer consequences.

   He paid for his fun in the sun with a terrible sunburn.

8. (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.'

• (to give money): compensate

• Sranan Tongo: paysa
• → Scottish Gaelic: pàigh

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.

   • 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter X, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:

     The skipper Mr. Cooke had hired at Far Harbor was a God-fearing man with a luke warm interest in his new billet and employer, and had only been prevailed upon to take charge of the yacht after the offer of an emolument equal to half a year's sea pay of an ensign in the navy.

pay (not comparable)

1. Operable or accessible on deposit of coins.

   pay toilet

2. Pertaining to or requiring payment.

   pay television

From Old French peier, from Latin picare (“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.

• “pay”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “pay”, in The Century Dictionary , New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
• “pay”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

• APY, Yap, pya, yap

pay

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

• Terry Crowley, The Mpakwithi dialect of Anguthimri (1981), page 187

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.

• Audio:

  (file)

pay (definite accusative payı, plural paylar)

1. share
2. portion

• paylamaq (“to distribute”)
• paylaşmaq (“to divide among one-selves”)

• Nişanyan, Sevan (2002–) “pay”, in Nişanyan Sözlük

From English pi, Ancient Greek πεῖ (peî).

• Hyphenation: pay

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

• py — Internet slang

• IPA^(key): /ˈpaj/

pay (Kur-itan spelling ᜉᜌ᜔)

1. still; yet; more

• Rubino, Carl Ralph Galvez (2000) “pay”, in Byron W. Bender, editor, Ilocano Dictionary and Grammar: Ilocano-English, English-Ilocano‎ (overall work in English and Ilocano), Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, →ISBN, →LCCN

From Proto-Mayan *pahar.

pay

1. skunk

• Church, Clarence, Church, Katherine (1955) Vocabulario castellano-jacalteco, jacalteco-castellano‎ (in Spanish), Guatemala C. A.: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano, page 65; 39

pay

1. A goat

pay

1. moon

• RWC Workshop (eds.). 2015. Komo – English Dictionary. SIL International.

pay

1. too

From Turkish pay.

• IPA^(key): /pɑːj/

pay ?

1. share

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

• IPA^(key): /ˈpaj/

pay m (plural pays)

1. (hypocoristic, usually childish) papa, dad, father
   • 1525-1526, Cancioneiro da Biblioteca Nacional, João de Gaia, B 1433: Vosso pai na rua (facsimile)

     Vosso pay na Rua / anta porta sua

     Your dad on the street / before his door

• padre

• mãy, madre

• Galician: pai
• Portuguese: pai (see there for further descendants)

pay m (plural pays)

1. Obsolete spelling of pai.
   • 1545, Garcia de Resende, Liuro das obras de Garcia de Reſẽnde que trata da vida do christianiſſimo; muito alto ⁊ muyto poderoſo principe el Rey dõ João o ſegundo deſte nome, page 1:

     De ſeu pay ⁊ ſua mãy ⁊ ſeu nacimento.

     About his father and his mother and his birth.

• IPA^(key): /ˈpaj/,

pay

1. he, she, it.

pay

1. father

Borrowed from English pie.

• IPA^(key): /ˈpai/
• Rhymes: -ai
• Syllabification: pay

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”).

• IPA^(key):
• Hyphenation: pay

pay (definite accusative payı, plural paylar)

1. portion
2. (arithmetic) numerator

• hak

• payda

• pay etmek (“to distribute”)
• paylaşmak (“to divide among one-selves”)
• paylaşık (“shared”)

• Armenian: փայ (pʻay)

• Nişanyan, Sevan (2002–) “pay”, in Nişanyan Sözlük