Word.ws English Dictionary

paid dearly

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

Meaning of pay dearly

Verb

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

  1. (figuratively) To suffer as a result of one's actions.
    • Both the G.W.R. and the L.S.W.R. had to pay dearly for the privilege of entering the Royal Borough, for the Prince Consort drove a hard bargain with each.1949 September and October, “Notes and News: The Windsor Centenary”, in Railway Magazine, page 340

Questions about paid dearly

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

Words near paid dearly in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: paid dearly (page history and authors); pay dearly (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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