Word.ws English Dictionary

paying the penalty

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

Meaning of pay the penalty

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic) To incur negative consequences of one's deeds; to suffer as a result of some choice.
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see pay, the, penalty.

Questions about paying the penalty

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

Words near paying the penalty in the dictionary

  1. paying respect
  2. paying someone's way
  3. paying the bills
  4. paying the fiddler
  5. paying the freight
  6. paying the penalty
  7. paying the piper
  8. paying the price
  9. paying the rent
  10. paying the ultimate price
  11. paying through the nose

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: paying the penalty (page history and authors); pay the penalty (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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Cite this entry: “paying the penalty.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/paying_the_penalty. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.