Word.ws English Dictionary

IOU

IOU phrase: i owe you.

Phrase

IOU

  1. I owe you.
    • Customarily, if you borrow $10 for lunch from a coworker, writing IOU $10 on a yellow sticky note acts as a legal promissory note that you will repay said amount on payday.

Noun

IOU (plural IOUs)

  1. An informal promissory note that is not a negotiable instrument.
    • When David couldn’t afford to match the money in the poker pot, he added an IOU for the remaining amount instead.

IOU meaning in Tamil

IOU in Tamil

நான் உனக்குக் கடன் பட்டுள்ளேன்

Forms of IOU

pluralIOUs

Origin of IOU

From the pronunciation of "I owe you". Attested since at least 1618.

Questions about IOU

What does IOU mean?
IOU means i owe you.
What is IOU in Tamil?
IOU in Tamil is நான் உனக்குக் கடன் பட்டுள்ளேன். See IOU meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is IOU?
IOU can be a phrase or a noun.

Words near IOU in the dictionary

  1. iotrolan
  2. iotroxate
  3. iotroxic acid
  4. Iott
  5. Iotts
  6. IOU
  7. IOU1
  8. Iouanalao
  9. Iouliana
  10. IOUs
  11. ioversol

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: IOU (page history and authors); IOU (Tamil Wiktionary) (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: “IOU.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/iou. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.