Other forms: owing, owed, owes
To owe is to have to give something back — usually money, sometimes gratitude, sometimes an explanation. I owe you ten pounds. She owes him an apology.
The pattern is owe somebody something, or owe something to somebody, and both are ordinary. Two things to watch. Owing to means because of, and it is a preposition with nothing to do with debt: owing to the weather, the match was cancelled. And owe is a state verb, so it is not used in the continuous — I am owing you is wrong. The related noun is a debt, not an owe; there is no noun form of this verb at all.
1verboweTo have to pay money back to somebody.~40%
“He still owes them for the tickets.”
synonyms: be in debt to
2verbobligedTo be obliged to give somebody something, such as thanks or an explanation.~30%
“You owe her an apology and you know it.”
3verbverbTo have something because of somebody or something.~30%
“She owes her career to a single lucky introduction.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 10 sentences found in the wild and placed 10 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
owe is a state of obligation.
Old English agan meant to own or possess, and it is the ancestor of both own and owe. The two split down the middle of the same idea: what you have, and what somebody else has a claim on. Ought is the old past tense of the same verb, which is why it still feels like a debt.
Middle English
owen
English, today
owe
Built from
From Middle English owen. From Middle English owen, from Old English āgan, from Proto-West Germanic aigan (“to own”), from Proto-Germanic aiganą, from Proto-Indo-European h₂eh₂óyḱe (“to possess, own”), reduplicated stative of h₂eyḱ- (“to own”). See also own, ought. Cognate with Sanskrit ईष्टे (“to own, possess”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA