to pay off
229
3.4
- phrasal verb
- /peɪ ɔf/
:
dar frutos
- After months of studying, her efforts finally paid off when she received her diploma.
- hard work pays off
- effort pays off
- work pays off
And that will pay off and we'll all be the better for it.
- And that will pay off and we'll all be the better for it.
- It's a risky old strategy, but it has paid off for me time and again.
- But then it's when that's when the grinding pays off because you're ready.
- I'm going to tell a story about when work paid off for a brief shining moment.
- And has the country paid off for you in the way that you hoped it would?
- It is amazing how many people that you meet one year pay off five years later.
- And again in this world, sometimes they pay off in certain ways.
- And as I said, this one has really paid off great.
- And, and yes, it can pay off in a lot of great ways.
- Quite often, doing the wrong thing does in fact pay off within the currency of the world.
- So I mean, the money is paying off so far.
- What was planted when and why does it pay off here?
- And now it's paid off because people, people befriend me.
- It's like complex equations that you're setting up and paying off and you know their surprises.
Examples
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And for Chandra, hard work pays off when you get it right.
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Those acting lessons really paid off.
-
And that will pay off and we'll all be the better for it.
-
And again in this world, sometimes they pay off in certain ways.
-
And as I said, this one has really paid off great.
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This web thing is really paying off.
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The time and effort put into the project paid off in the end.
Academic text (2013) -
Years of effort are paying off in renewed hope for the species' survival.
Academic text (1999) -
The result is a host of courses in college survival that pay off in increased retention.
Academic text (1997) -
And we've found that simplicity usually pays off in human resources management.
Fiction book (1997)
Synonyms
832
2.1
To be worth the time or effort
8
7.5
To find big success or money after trying hard
Antonyms
How Successful
Surface Forms
Morphology
The sense 'to take revenge' cannot be straightforwardly derived from 'pay' (transfer money) combined with 'off' (here noted as a slang verb 'to murder' or otherwise a particle). The relation is idiomatic and relies on pragmatic or slang usage rather than regular compositional rules, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents would unlikely infer this meaning.
Etymology
Pay off comes from the image of putting in time or money and later getting something back: your effort is like money you pay, and it finally returns as a reward, so it means 'to result in a benefit'.