Word.ws English Dictionary

paid back

paid back is the simple past and past participle of pay back.

Meaning of pay back

Verb

pay back (third-person singular simple present pays back, present participle paying back, simple past and past participle paid back)

  1. (transitive) To pay (a debt or the lender) so as to provide the entire amount of money owed.
    • Douglas: Roy, give me £20.
      Roy: What?
      Douglas: Give me £20. I'll pay you back.2008 November 21, Graham Linehan, The IT Crowd, Season 3, Episode 1
  2. (figuratively) To avenge, to exact revenge.
    • He paid her back with interest, avenging his father's murder with nine degrees of reprisal.

Questions about paid back

What is paid back the simple past and past participle of?
Paid back is the simple past and past participle of pay back.

Words near paid back in the dictionary

  1. paick
  2. paicks
  3. paid
  4. paid a visit
  5. paid attention
  6. paid back
  7. paid back in someone's own coin
  8. paid dearly
  9. paid dividends
  10. paid down
  11. paid for itself

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: paid back (page history and authors); pay back (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: “paid back.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/paid_back. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.