Word.ws English Dictionary

pay the bills

pay the bills verb: of a job or profession, to provide enough income to sustain one's lifestyle.

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic) Of a job or profession, to provide enough income to sustain one's lifestyle.
    • Being a dentist isn't so glamorous, but it pays the bills.
    Synonyms:
    pay the rent

Synonyms of pay the bills

Forms of pay the bills

third-person singular presentpays the bills
present participlepaying the bills
past participlepaid the bills
pastpaid the bills

Questions about pay the bills

What does pay the bills mean?
Pay the bills means of a job or profession, to provide enough income to sustain one's lifestyle.
What part of speech is pay the bills?
Pay the bills is a verb.
What is the past tense of pay the bills?
The past tense of pay the bills is paid the bills.

Words near pay the bills in the dictionary

  1. pay stub
  2. pay stubs
  3. pay table
  4. pay tables
  5. pay television
  6. pay the bills
  7. pay the debt of nature
  8. pay the fiddler
  9. pay the freight
  10. pay the penalty
  11. pay the piper

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pay the bills (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-pay the bills.ogg.

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