Word.ws English Dictionary

paid to play

paid to play is the simple past and past participle of pay to play.

Meaning of pay to play

Verb

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

  1. (broadly) To incur a cost to participate in an activity; especially, in a corrupt way.
    • Whether or not the father of our country was prone to campaign overkill [referring to a quoted passage about George Washington handing out rum, wine, beer, and cider for electioneering efforts], the above points up the fact that running for public office has long required the expenditure of...1986, United States Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, The Transformation in American Politics: Implications for Federalism, United States Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental...
    1. (US, broadly, especially) To make a campaign contribution or illegal payment to avail oneself of business or other opportunities controlled by politicians or civil servants.
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see pay, to, play.

See all 5 meanings of pay to play

Questions about paid to play

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

Words near paid to play in the dictionary

  1. paid the piper
  2. paid the price
  3. paid the rent
  4. paid the ultimate price
  5. paid through the nose
  6. paid to play
  7. paid towards
  8. paid up
  9. paid with one's life
  10. paid-in
  11. paid-up

Source and license

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