pay up
"pay-up" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“pay up” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 6
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To pay in total a sum which is owed, especially when the sum has been owed for a period of time.
Corpus desk
Index EN-pay-up · pay up · English
pay up · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 6 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 up |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 6 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “pay up” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
pay up is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "To pay in total a sum which is owed, especially when the sum has been owed for a period of time.".
pay up doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. This entry stands alone in our confusable dataset, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so its spelling is best explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct English form is pay up, spelled P-A-Y- -U-P.
Definition
- 1To pay in total a sum which is owed, especially when the sum has been owed for a period of time.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how pay up appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
At Whitsunday and Martinmas I will have enough to pay up the incumbrance of £3000 due to old Moss's daughter.
"Suppose we sell off all the horses, and sell one of your farms, and pay up square?"
Synonyms
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.
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Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.