Word.ws English Dictionary

pay forward

pay forward verb: having been the recipient of help or a good deed, to propagate goodwill by helping another person in turn.

Verb

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

  1. (transitive) Having been the recipient of help or a good deed, to propagate goodwill by helping another person in turn.
    Synonyms:
    pay it forward

Synonyms of pay forward

Forms of pay forward

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

Origin of pay forward

Modelled on pay back (“to repay”).

Questions about pay forward

What does pay forward mean?
Pay forward means having been the recipient of help or a good deed, to propagate goodwill by helping another person in turn.
What part of speech is pay forward?
Pay forward is a verb.
What is the past tense of pay forward?
The past tense of pay forward is paid forward.

Words near pay forward in the dictionary

  1. pay for
  2. pay for itself
  3. pay for one's whistle
  4. pay for play
  5. pay fors
  6. pay forward
  7. pay freeze
  8. pay freezes
  9. pay gap
  10. pay gaps
  11. pay good money after bad

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pay forward (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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