Word.ws English Dictionary

pay-for

pay-for noun: something which is used to pay for a bill, such as an increase in taxes.

Noun

pay-for (plural pay-fors)

  1. (US) Something which is used to pay for a bill, such as an increase in taxes.
    • The government is debating whether to include various pay-fors in order to fund the new infrastructure bill.
    • The bill is instead paid for by a jumble of pay-fors, including $40 billion from the Federal Reserve surplus account, which acts as a cushion to help the Fed take potential losses.2015 December 1, Jason Plautz, “After Years of Waiting, Congress Finally Has Its Long-Term Transportation Bill”, in The Atlantic, Washington, D.C.: The Atlantic Monthly Group, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived...

Examples of pay-for in a sentence

  • Where were the 'pay-fors' for [George] Bush's $5 trillion wars and tax cuts, or for last year's $2 trillion tax giveaway to billionaires?2019 January 16, Robert Hockett, “The Green New Deal: How We Will Pay For It Isn't 'A Thing' - And Inflation Isn't Either”, in Forbes, New...
  • "Other industries were probably better prepared to fend off being a pay-for," said Ed Mills, Washington policy analyst at Raymond James.2021 August 9, Victoria Guida, “Washington wakes up to crypto influence amid infrastructure fight”, in Politico, archived from the original...

Forms of pay-for

pluralpay-fors

Origin of pay-for

Deverbal from pay for.

Questions about pay-for

What does pay-for mean?
Pay-for means something which is used to pay for a bill, such as an increase in taxes.
How do you use pay-for in a sentence?
Where were the 'pay-fors' for [George] Bush's $5 trillion wars and tax cuts, or for last year's $2 trillion tax giveaway to billionaires?
What part of speech is pay-for?
Pay-for is a noun.
What is the plural of pay-for?
The plural of pay-for is pay-fors.

Words near pay-for in the dictionary

  1. pay-and-display
  2. pay-as-you-eat
  3. pay-as-you-go
  4. pay-by-wave
  5. pay-dirt
  6. pay-for
  7. pay-for-delay
  8. pay-fors
  9. pay-in slip
  10. pay-in slips
  11. pay-neutral

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pay-for (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: “pay-for.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pay-for. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.