Word.ws English Dictionary

short-pay

short-pay verb: to pay (someone) less than the amount that is owed; to underpay through error, omission, or miscalculation.

Verb

short-pay (third-person singular simple present short-pays, present participle short-paid, simple past and past participle short-payed)

  1. To pay (someone) less than the amount that is owed; to underpay through error, omission, or miscalculation.
    • A short payment occurs when a customer underpays their invoice... At times, a customer may short pay an invoice as part of a cash flow management strategy, choosing to pay less than the full amount to minimize their outflow of money.2023 December 15, Shaun Jex, “How to Handle Short Payments”, in Quadient

Synonyms of short-pay

Forms of short-pay

third-person singular presentshort-pays
present participleshort-paid
past participleshort-payed
pastshort-payed
alternative formshortpay
alternative formshort pay

Origin of short-pay

From short + pay, parallel to compounds such as shortchange. Attested in financial and employment contexts since at least the early 20th century.

Questions about short-pay

What does short-pay mean?
Short-pay means to pay (someone) less than the amount that is owed; to underpay through error, omission, or miscalculation.
What part of speech is short-pay?
Short-pay is a verb.
What is the past tense of short-pay?
The past tense of short-pay is short-payed.

Words near short-pay in the dictionary

  1. short-order chef
  2. short-order chefs
  3. short-order cook
  4. short-order cooks
  5. short-paid
  6. short-pay
  7. short-period
  8. short-period comet
  9. short-period comets
  10. short-range
  11. short-run

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: short-pay (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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