English

Verb

pay up ‎(third-person singular simple present pays up, present participle paying up, simple past and past participle paid up)

1. (intransitive and transitive) To pay in total a sum which is owed, especially when the sum has been owed for a period of time.
   • 1825, Sir Walter Scott, The Journal of Sir Walter Scott, December 14:

     At Whitsunday and Martinmas I will have enough to pay up the incumbrance of £3000 due to old Moss's daughter.

   • 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin, ch. 21:

     "Suppose we sell off all the horses, and sell one of your farms, and pay up square?"

   • 1875, Horatio Alger, Herbert Carter's Legacy, ch. 2:

     We could pay up the mortgage on the house, and have something left over.

   • 1910, Louis Joseph Vance, The Fortune Hunter, ch. 16:

     The Citizen gained eighteen subscribers; four old ones paid up their accounts.

   • 1997, Taran Provost, "$25 Million," Time:

     [T]he decision pushes Simpson's potential financial obligation to a whopping $33.5 million […] and left Simpson lawyers swearing that there was no way their client could ever pay up.

   • 2013 June 8, “Obama goes troll-hunting”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8839, page 55:

     According to this saga of intellectual-property misanthropy, these creatures [patent trolls] roam the business world, buying up patents and then using them to demand extravagant payouts from companies they accuse of infringing them. Often, their victims pay up rather than face the costs of a legal battle.

Synonyms

• (transitive): pay off