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Past tense of “pay”

💳 To give money for something.

Number 36 of 175 by frequency, well inside the everyday core, and the past and the participle are both paid. Worth learning properly rather than recognising vaguely.

Mistakes people make with “pay”

Not “payed”. Pay does not take -ed — the past simple is paid, however regular it feels to add the ending.

Phrases you will actually hear

These are worth learning whole. A verb sticks far better inside a phrase somebody would really say than on its own in a table.

Two forms, learned as one word

The past simple and the past participle are the same word, paid. Half the work disappears: learn pay · paid and you have the whole verb. What is left is telling the two jobs apart — He paid the bill and left. is the past simple, Have you paid for the tickets yet? is the perfect, and have does all the signalling.

There is no tidy rule connecting pay to paid — this is a verb you memorise as a pair and stop analysing. The consolation is that it is a pair and not a trio: payed is the only wrong answer worth guarding against.

The same pattern — twins — runs through 73 verbs: