pay back

Questions about pay back

What does pay back mean?

pay back means "act or give recompense in recognition of someone's behavior or actions". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

What is another word for pay back?

Close synonyms include reward, repay, pay off, get, fix. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is pay back a common word?

pay back is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.