Past tense of pay
irregular verb
The past tense of pay is paid. The past participle is also paid.
Forms of pay
| Base form (V1) | pay /peɪ/ |
|---|---|
| Past tense (V2) | paid /peɪd/ |
| Past participle (V3) | paid /peɪd/ |
| Present participle | paying /ˈpeɪ.ɪŋ/ |
| Third person singular | pays /peɪz/ |
Past tense of pay by meaning
- to give money or other compensation to in exchange for goods or services.: paid
- to cover (the bottom of a vessel, a seam, a spar, etc.) with tar or pitch, or a...: payed or paid
Paid in a sentence
- He was paid off the books and in kind where possible.
- Thrown on her own resources and almost penniless, she maintained herself and paid the rent of a wretched room near the hospital by working as a charwoman, sempstress, anything.1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XVII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC
- We paid a quick visit to James on the way up to Scotland.From the entry visit
- He didn’t realise until he’d paid for it that the car was a lemon.From the entry lemon
- He became a human guinea pig and was paid by the company.From the entry guinea pig
Meaning of pay
- verb To give money or other compensation to in exchange for goods or services.
- verb To deposit into an account.
- verb To discharge, as a debt or other obligation, by giving or doing what is due or required.
Verbs like pay
Questions about the past tense of pay
- What is the past tense of pay?
- The past tense of pay is paid.
- What is the past participle of pay?
- The past participle of pay is paid.
- Is pay a regular or irregular verb?
- Pay is an irregular verb: its past tense is not formed with -ed.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: pay (page history and authors) and the entries of its forms. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws left out forms marked obsolete, archaic, rare or dialectal and added the examples. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this page: “Past tense of pay.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/past-tense/pay. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.