Word.ws English Dictionary

back pay

back pay noun: a withheld payment for work which has already been completed, or which could have been completed had the employee not been prevented from doing so.

Noun

back pay (countable and uncountable, plural back pays)

  1. A withheld payment for work which has already been completed, or which could have been completed had the employee not been prevented from doing so.
  2. Pay received by an employee from an increase awarded retrospectively, and backdated.

Forms of back pay

pluralback pays
alternative formbackpay

Origin of back pay

From back + pay.

Questions about back pay

What does back pay mean?
Back pay means a withheld payment for work which has already been completed, or which could have been completed had the employee not been prevented from doing so.
What part of speech is back pay?
Back pay is a noun.
What is the plural of back pay?
The plural of back pay is back pays.

Words near back pay in the dictionary

  1. back passage
  2. back passages
  3. back passes
  4. back pat
  5. back pats
  6. back pay
  7. back payment
  8. back payments
  9. back pays
  10. back pedal brake
  11. back pedal brakes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: back pay (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “back pay.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/back_pay. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.