paying attention

Questions about paying attention

What does paying attention mean?

paying attention means "paying particular notice (as to children or helpless people)". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

What is another word for paying attention?

Close synonyms include attentiveness, heed, regard, heedful, attentive. 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 paying attention a common word?

paying attention is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.