Word.ws English Dictionary

paying back

paying back is the present participle and gerund of pay back.

Meaning of pay back

Verb

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

  1. (transitive) To pay (a debt or the lender) so as to provide the entire amount of money owed.
    • Douglas: Roy, give me £20.
      Roy: What?
      Douglas: Give me £20. I'll pay you back.2008 November 21, Graham Linehan, The IT Crowd, Season 3, Episode 1
  2. (figuratively) To avenge, to exact revenge.
    • He paid her back with interest, avenging his father's murder with nine degrees of reprisal.

Questions about paying back

What is paying back the present participle and gerund of?
Paying back is the present participle and gerund of pay back.

Words near paying back in the dictionary

  1. payik
  2. payiks
  3. paying
  4. paying a visit
  5. paying attention
  6. paying back
  7. paying back in someone's own coin
  8. paying dearly
  9. paying dividends
  10. paying down
  11. paying for itself

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: paying back (page history and authors); pay back (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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