payable

UK/ˈpeɪəbl̩/US/ˈpeɪəbl̩/

adjectiveB2Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #9,330 of 15,258leans written

Payable means due to be paid. Payable on delivery, payable in advance, cheques payable to.

It names when and to whom rather than how much — payable on the first of the month, payable to the council. In accounting, accounts payable is what a business owes and accounts receivable what it is owed, and the pair is the first thing anybody learns. Note pay, from the Latin for pacifying.

Definitions of payable

1adjectivepayableDue to be paid.B2
“The rent is payable on the first day of every month.”

payable is a quality of being due.

Where it comes from

Latin
pācō — to pacify
Medieval Latin
pācāre — to settle, satisfy
Old French
paiier — pay
Middle English
payen
English
pay
English, today
payable

Built from

ġieldan · Old English — to pay

From pay + -able. pay comes from Middle English payen, from Old French paiier (“pay”), from Medieval Latin pācāre (“to settle, satisfy”) from Latin pācō (“to pacify”). In this sense, displaced native ġield and ġieldan (“to pay”), whence Modern English yield.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Word Building

Practise this word

payable in the wild

Accounts payable (AP) is money owed by a business to its suppliers, shown as a liability on a company's balance sheet.
Accounts payable
Secondly: the succeeding benefit: a standard rate (equivalent to the former Bereavement allowance), which is payable to surviving partners without children.
Bereavement Support Payment
None of these benefits are payable if the claimant is over state pension age.
Bereavement Support Payment

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the pācō family

pay

payable — used about once every 4,394 pages · #9,330 · point at the bar for the others

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