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repay

verb

Simple meaning

Act or give recompense in recognition of someone's behavior or actions.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

reepay

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US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ɹiˈpeɪ

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

verb

  1. Act or give recompense in recognition of someone's behavior or actions

  2. transitive

    To give in return; requite.

  3. Make repayment for or return something

  4. transitive

    To make worthwhile; to yield a result worth the effort; to pay off.

  5. Answer back

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
B2 · Upper Intermediate (estimated)
Frequency
Moderately Common
Typical Use
Neutral / general English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: Act or give recompense in recognition of someone's behavior or actions

Used this way, repay is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
No strong connotation
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

well repayever repayamply repayrepay loans

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More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

Sense: act or give recompense in recognition of someone's behavior

retort

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.