Payed as past participle

 

Q:

I would like to know if there is a regular form of the verb pay–payed–payed with a meaning other than its habitual one.

Horacio Abud
sienct@movi.com.ar

A:

Yes, there is. Surprisingly, payed appears in an entry in The American Heritage Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin, 1996). It’s the past form and past participle of pay meaning: "to let out a line or cable by slackening." It’s a nautical term.

This pay is different from pay, the verb you must mean as “the habitual one,” which means “to give money in exchange for something.” The irregular past and past participle forms of this usual pay are paid and paid. The pay that you mention, with the past and past participle forms of payed and payed, is formed in the regular manner: by adding -ed to the simple form of the verb.

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