Word.ws English Dictionary

beyond one's pay grade

beyond one's pay grade prepositional phrase: beyond one's level of authority.

Prepositional phrase

  1. (idiomatic) Beyond one's level of authority.
    • Sir, I think that is a policy decision only the President can make. That is beyond my pay grade.1971, Testimony before U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Armed Services
  2. (idiomatic) Beyond one's capability.
    • Figuring out how it would work logistically is above and beyond my pay grade and my brain power.2007, Los Angeles Times

Synonyms of beyond one's pay grade

Origin of beyond one's pay grade

Possibly from the correspondence of the pay grade to the level of authority in the U.S. civil service and in the U.S. armed forces.

Questions about beyond one's pay grade

What does beyond one's pay grade mean?
Beyond one's pay grade means beyond one's level of authority.
What part of speech is beyond one's pay grade?
Beyond one's pay grade is a prepositional phrase.

Words near beyond one's pay grade in the dictionary

  1. beyond comparison
  2. beyond dispute
  3. beyond measure
  4. beyond one's depth
  5. beyond one's ken
  6. beyond one's pay grade
  7. beyond one's wildest dreams
  8. beyond one's years
  9. beyond question
  10. beyond reason of a doubt
  11. beyond reasonable doubt

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: beyond one's pay grade (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-beyond one's pay grade.ogg.

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