Payer

How to spell payer

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce payer

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does payer mean?

1. nounA person or organisation that pays or is responsible for paying money.

Payer in a sentence

• The insurance company is the main payer for these hospital costs.

• As the sole payer of the household bills, she watched every expense closely.

Where does payer come from?

Language of origin: French

This word traces back to the Latin verb pacare, which literally meant 'to pacify' or 'to make peace', built on pax, the Latin word for 'peace'. The link between peace and money may seem odd, but the sense developed because settling a debt was a way of appeasing or satisfying a creditor; you paid someone off to keep the peace. The verb passed into Old French as payer, meaning 'to pay', and English borrowed the verb 'pay' during the 1200s. The agent noun 'payer', meaning the one who does the paying, simply adds the familiar -er ending to that verb. Interestingly the spelling keeps the -y- of 'pay' before the suffix rather than changing it to an -i-, which is why we write 'payer' and not the trap form 'paier', and the same peaceful root still survives in the modern word 'pacify'.

How the word is built

• pay (to give money)
• -er (one who does)