Word.ws English Dictionary

pays for one's whistle

pays for one's whistle is the third-person singular simple present indicative of pay for one's whistle.

Meaning of pay for one's whistle

Verb

pay for one's whistle (third-person singular simple present pays for one's whistle, present participle paying for one's whistle, simple past and past participle paid for one's whistle)

  1. (dated) To pay dearly for one's caprice.
    • […] the ship may be on shore before the leader of the band can be convinced how dearly he has "paid for his whistle."1836, William Nugent Glascock, The Naval Service, page 239

Questions about pays for one's whistle

What is pays for one's whistle the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Pays for one's whistle is the third-person singular simple present indicative of pay for one's whistle.

Words near pays for one's whistle in the dictionary

  1. Pays de la Loire
  2. pays dearly
  3. pays dividends
  4. pays down
  5. pays for itself
  6. pays for one's whistle
  7. pays forward
  8. pays good money after bad
  9. pays heed
  10. pays homage to
  11. pays home

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pays for one's whistle (page history and authors); pay for one's whistle (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “pays for one's whistle.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pays_for_one%27s_whistle. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.