pay attention

To pay attention is to listen and keep your mind on the thing in front of you. Eyes up, phone down, the teacher waiting.

English treats it as money — you pay it, and you can pay somebody your full or undivided kind. It takes to: to the road, to the small print, to what she actually said. There is no article, and putting one in is the mistake learners make most here. Pay none of it means ignore, and the span of it is what you say you have run out of at the end of a long meeting.

Phrases it lives in

• pay no attention — To ignore something deliberately.