Word.ws English Dictionary

pay dearly

pay dearly verb: to suffer as a result of one's actions.

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

Forms of pay dearly

third-person singular presentpays dearly
present participlepaying dearly
past participlepaid dearly
pastpaid dearly

Questions about pay dearly

What does pay dearly mean?
Pay dearly means to suffer as a result of one's actions.
What part of speech is pay dearly?
Pay dearly is a verb.
What is the past tense of pay dearly?
The past tense of pay dearly is paid dearly.

Words near pay dearly in the dictionary

  1. pay cheques
  2. pay cut
  3. pay cuts
  4. pay day
  5. pay days
  6. pay dearly
  7. pay dirt
  8. pay dividends
  9. pay down
  10. pay for
  11. pay for itself

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: 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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