Definition of "pay"

pay¹

/peɪ/

verb
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.
  Quotations
  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.
  1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XVII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company
  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.
  2012, BioWare, Mass Effect 3, Redwood City: Electronic Arts, PC, scene: Normandy SR-2
  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.
  2013 June 21, Oliver Burkeman, “The tao of tech”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 2, page 48
2. (transitive, intransitive) To discharge, as a debt or other obligation, by giving or doing what is due or required.
  Quotations
  The wicked borroweth, and payeth not again.
  1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], Psalms 37:21
  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.
  1594, William Shakespeare, Lucrece (First Quarto)‎, London: […] Richard Field, for Iohn Harrison, […]
  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.
  2013 June 22, “T time”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8841, page 68
3. (transitive) To be profitable for.
4. (transitive) To give (something else than money).
  Quotations
  not paying me a welcome
  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, [Act V, scene i]
  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.
  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, page 9
5. (intransitive) To be profitable or worth the effort.
6. (intransitive) To discharge an obligation or debt.
7. (intransitive) To suffer consequences.
8. (transitive) To admit that a joke, punchline, etc., was funny.
  Quotations
  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.'
  1996, Jon Byrell, Lairs, Urgers and Coat-Tuggers, Sydney: Ironbark, page 294
noun
countable and uncountable, plural pays
1. Money given in return for work; salary or wages.
  Quotations
  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.
  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.
adjective
not comparable
1. Operable or accessible on deposit of coins.
2. Pertaining to or requiring payment.

pay²

/peɪ/

verb
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.

Definition of "pay"

pay1

verb

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noun

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adjective

pay2

verb

pay¹

pay²