Payout

How to spell payout

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce payout

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does payout mean?

1. nounA sum of money that is paid out, especially a large or one-off distribution such as a winning, dividend, or insurance settlement.

Payout in a sentence

• The insurance payout covered the cost of rebuilding the kitchen.

• Shareholders were pleased with the annual dividend payout.

Where does payout come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is a modern compound built from the everyday verb 'pay' and the particle 'out', and it emerged in business and gambling contexts during the twentieth century. The 'pay' half travelled a long way: it came into English in the 1200s through Old French 'paier', which descended from the Latin verb 'pacare', meaning 'to pacify' or 'to satisfy'. That verb in turn grew from 'pax', the Latin word for 'peace', so the original idea was that handing over money 'made peace' with a creditor or settled a quarrel. Over the centuries the sense narrowed from 'appease' to the plain commercial meaning of 'hand over money owed'. Fixing the particle 'out' onto the verb gave a noun for money paid forth or distributed, and because it is a transparent two-part compound the spelling is regular: simply 'pay' followed directly by 'out' with no space and no hyphen.

How the word is built

• pay (to give money for)
• out (adverbial particle: forth, distributed)