to pay the rent
44
1.1
- phrasal verb
:
pagar el alquiler
- I left the apartment less and less, leaving only to buy groceries and pay the rent.
- help pay the rent
We've even offered to pay the rent, find them a place to live and they won't go.
- We've even offered to pay the rent, find them a place to live and they won't go.
- It was really to make enough money to pay the rent.
- And in the same way like what you're saying, we have to pay the rent?
- Yeah, because that's because otherwise I'll find a way to pay the rent.
- And they actually skipped us and didn't, didn't reach out to us because we didn't pay the rent.
- But now the the landlords are going to start suing again for people who aren't paying the rent.
- And that that is what it takes to pay the rent here.
- We want to but you know, when the funding starts to dry up, when you you know, you have to pay the rent in a certain way and and, and your bottom line is, is profit.
Examples
-
The majority of clients are not able to pay the rent now because of a downturn in business.
Academic text (2002) -
I gotta pay the rent.
-
I need money to pay the rent next week. You know, like you gotta have cash. I get that.
-
Well, how else is she gonna pay the rent?
-
It's all many people can do just to pay the rent from month to month.
Blog text (25) -
We've got to pay the rent, you know.
-
We've started a publishing collective, and it's actually bringing in enough to pay the rent.
Fiction book (1992) -
Many couples and individuals paid the rent by subletting rooms to boarders.
Academic text (1998) -
And when people are hungry and don't have money to pay the rent, don't have money to buy food, they riot.
-
I need to pay the rent by the end of the month to keep my apartment.
Antonyms
- Specialized
38
6.2
Not doing something you must do, for example not paying taxes, by using tricks
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'pay' (transfer money) combined with 'rent' (money paid for use of property), with 'the' as a definite article, yields the straightforward action of making the regular payment. This is a frequent, literal collocation found across languages, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words will readily understand it.
Etymology
Pay the rent comes from the simple picture of handing money to the owner so you can live in a house. You pay money for the rent, and so it means 'to make a regular payment to a landlord for the use of a home'.