Pay day or payday?
pay day is a noun meaning “Alternative form of payday”; payday is a noun meaning “The day of the week or month, or the specific day, on which an employee's wages…”. pay day is written as two words and payday as one word; they are used differently.
What is the difference between pay day and payday?
| pay day | payday | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun | noun |
| Meaning | Alternative form of payday | The day of the week or month, or the specific day, on which an employee's wages or salary is paid |
| Example | none recorded | none recorded |
| Forms | none | paydays |
| Pronunciation | not recorded | /ˈpeɪdeɪ/ |
| In writing | not counted (the list counts single words) | 4.1 times per million words |
Sources: pay day and payday in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of pay day and payday
pay day
- 1
Alternative form of payday
payday
- 1
The day of the week or month, or the specific day, on which an employee's wages or salary is paid
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, pay day or payday?
pay day is a phrase, which the list of single words does not count; payday 4.1 times per million words.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search pay day vs payday?
“pay day vs payday” is searched about 30 times a month on Google and 10 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“payday vs pay day”, “pay day or payday”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.