pay up
pay up verb: to pay in total a sum which is owed, especially when the sum has been owed for a period of time.
Verb
pay up (third-person singular simple present pays up, present participle paying up, simple past and past participle paid up)
- To pay in total a sum which is owed, especially when the sum has been owed for a period of time.
- At Whitsunday and Martinmas I will have enough to pay up the incumbrance of £3000 due to old Moss's daughter.1825 December 14 (date written), Walter Scott, “[Entry dated 14 December 1825]”, in David Douglas, editor, The Journal of Sir Walter Scott […], volume I, Edinburgh: David Douglas, published 1890...
- "Suppose we sell off all the horses, and sell one of your farms, and pay up square?"1851 June – 1852 April, Harriet Beecher Stowe, chapter 21, in Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly, volume (please specify |volume=I or II), Boston, Mass.: John P[unchard] Jewett & Company...
pay up meaning in Tamil and Malayalam
pay up in Tamil
- கட்டு
pay up in Malayalam
- settle up, make payment, pay (in full)
- പണം അടയ്ക്കുക, പണം കൊടുക്കുക, ഇടപാടുതീർക്കുക, കടം വീട്ടുക, ബാധ്യതവിടർത്തുക, മുഴുവൻ തുകയും കൊടുത്തു തീർക്കുക
Examples of pay up in a sentence
- We could pay up the mortgage on the house, and have something left over.1875, Horatio Alger, chapter 2, in Herbert Carter's Legacy:
- [T]he decision pushes Simpson's potential financial obligation to a whopping $33.5 million[…]and left Simpson lawyers swearing that there was no way their client could ever pay up.1997, Taran Provost, “$25 Million”, in Time:
- Often, their victims pay up rather than face the costs of a legal battle.2013 June 8, “Obama goes troll-hunting”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8839, page 55:
Synonyms of pay up
Forms of pay up
| third-person singular present | pays up |
|---|---|
| present participle | paying up |
| past participle | paid up |
| past | paid up |
Questions about pay up
- What does pay up mean?
- Pay up means to pay in total a sum which is owed, especially when the sum has been owed for a period of time.
- What is pay up in Tamil?
- Pay up in Tamil is கட்டு. See Pay up meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use pay up in a sentence?
- We could pay up the mortgage on the house, and have something left over.
- What part of speech is pay up?
- Pay up is a verb.
- What is the past tense of pay up?
- The past tense of pay up is paid up.
Words near pay up in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: pay up (page history and authors); pay up (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); pay up (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “pay up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pay_up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.