Word.ws English Dictionary

to what do I owe the pleasure

to what do I owe the pleasure phrase: a question asked to know the reason for being visited by the interlocutor.

Phrase

to what do I owe the pleasure?

  1. (formal, humorous) A question asked to know the reason for being visited by the interlocutor.
    • At that moment the headmaster Mr Grave entered the classroom without knocking, his long coat flapping behind him like a cape. The naughty kids at the back of the class who had been texting throughout the lesson quickly hid their mobile phones under the desk. “Ah, Mr Grave, to what do I owe the...2012, David Walliams [pseudonym; David Edward Williams], “The Midget”, in Ratburger, London: HarperCollins Children’s Books, →ISBN, page 109
    Synonyms:
    to what do I owe this honour

Synonyms of to what do I owe the pleasure

  • to what do I owe this honour

Questions about to what do I owe the pleasure

What does to what do I owe the pleasure mean?
To what do I owe the pleasure means a question asked to know the reason for being visited by the interlocutor.
What part of speech is to what do I owe the pleasure?
To what do I owe the pleasure is a phrase.

Words near to what do I owe the pleasure in the dictionary

  1. to this end
  2. to those it may concern
  3. to time
  4. to top it off
  5. to wake the dead
  6. to what do I owe the pleasure
  7. to what end
  8. to whom it may concern
  9. to whom this may concern
  10. to wisse
  11. to wit

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: to what do I owe the pleasure (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-to what do I owe the pleasure.wav.

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