pay back
/peɪ bæk/
"pay-back" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“pay back” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 8
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To pay (a debt or the lender) so as to provide the entire amount of money owed.
Corpus desk
Index EN-pay-back · pay back · English
pay back · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 8 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "P" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | pay back |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /peɪ bæk/ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “pay back” in English
Rare enough to double-check
pay back is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb, transcribed /peɪ bæk/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for pay back, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct English form is pay back, spelled P-A-Y- -B-A-C-K.
Definition
- 1To pay (a debt or the lender) so as to provide the entire amount of money owed.
- 2To avenge, to exact revenge.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how pay back appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Douglas: Roy, give me £20. Roy: What? Douglas: Give me £20. I'll pay you back.
He paid her back with interest, giving her ₿3 and an NFT for the $6 he'd borrowed last week.
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.