pay the price
"pay-the-price" is a 11-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“pay the price” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 13
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To incur the negative consequences of (one’s own or someone else’s) actions or decisions.
Corpus desk
Index EN-pay-the-price · pay the price · English
pay the price · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 13 letters
- VOW-5 5 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 the price |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 13 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “pay the price” in English
Rare enough to double-check
pay the price is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "To incur the negative consequences of (one’s own or someone else’s) actions or decisions.".
No generated misspelling entries exist for pay the price in our index, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. This headword has no recorded confusable partner, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
This entry carries no recorded etymology, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct English form is pay the price, spelled P-A-Y- -T-H-E- -P-R-I-C-E.
Definition
- 1To incur the negative consequences of (one’s own or someone else’s) actions or decisions.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how pay the price appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Yet United may have paid the price for overconfidence as they completely lost their concentration after 10 minutes to let Wolves back in.
Shadow Transport Secretary Louise Haigh said ahead of the vote: "Northern communities are, once again, paying the price for broken Tory promises on rail.
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.