pay attention

/\ˈpeɪ ə.ˈtɛn.ʃən\/ verb

Letters

13 characters

Language

French

word origin

Misspellings

0

tracked variants

Confusables

0

similar word pairs

pay attention is aFrenchverb. It means: Faire attention (à), prêter attention (à). Pronounced \ˈpeɪ ə.ˈtɛn.ʃən\.

Key facts for pay attention
PropertyValue
Headwordpay attention
LanguageFrench
Part of speechVerb
IPA\ˈpeɪ ə.ˈtɛn.ʃən\
Letters13
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

pay attention is not present in the top-100,000 ranked French corpus, typical for technical, archaic, or low-frequency vocabulary.

Source: Wordfreq corpus

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The French entry for pay attention is 13 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \ˈpeɪ ə.ˈtɛn.ʃən\. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader.Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.

No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for pay attention in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable French patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.

No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct French form is pay attention, spelled P-A-Y- -A-T-T-E-N-T-I-O-N, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    Faire attention (à), prêter attention (à).
  2. 2
    Tenir compte de.

Synonyms

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "pay attention"?
"pay attention" is spelled P-A-Y- -A-T-T-E-N-T-I-O-N. The IPA pronunciation is \ˈpeɪ ə.ˈtɛn.ʃən\.
What does "pay attention" mean?
As a verb, "pay attention" means: Faire attention (à), prêter attention (à).
How do you pronounce "pay attention"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "pay attention" is \ˈpeɪ ə.ˈtɛn.ʃən\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "pay attention" come from?
"pay attention" is a French word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Nearby French words

Other entries that begin with the letter P in our French index:

Explore PlainSpell

Data Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Frequency data from Wordfreq. Misspellings derived from Hunspell dictionaries.