Word.ws English Dictionary

paid one's own way

paid one's own way is the simple past and past participle of pay one's own way.

Meaning of pay one's own way

Verb

pay one's own way (third-person singular simple present pays one's own way, present participle paying one's own way, simple past and past participle paid one's own way)

  1. To pay for oneself, not relying on the generosity of others.
    • He paid his own way through community college and then transferred to a state university.
  2. Synonym of pay for itself.
    • Any in-house product development must pay its own way.
    Synonyms:
    pay for itself

Questions about paid one's own way

What is paid one's own way the simple past and past participle of?
Paid one's own way is the simple past and past participle of pay one's own way.

Words near paid one's own way in the dictionary

  1. paid off old scores
  2. paid one's addresses
  3. paid one's debt to society
  4. paid one's dues
  5. paid one's own freight
  6. paid one's own way
  7. paid one's respects
  8. paid one's way
  9. paid out
  10. paid overs
  11. paid respect

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: paid one's own way (page history and authors); pay one's own way (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “paid one's own way.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/paid_one%27s_own_way. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.