Prepaid

How to spell prepaid

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce prepaid

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does prepaid mean?

1. adjectivePaid for in advance, before a service or product is used or delivered.
2. verbPast tense of prepay: to have paid for something before receiving it.

Prepaid in a sentence

• adjective

  She topped up her prepaid mobile phone before the trip.

• verb

  The company prepaid the shipping so customers owed nothing on arrival.

• adjective

  The parcel arrived with a prepaid return label inside.

• verb

  He prepaid the rent for three months to secure the flat.

Where does prepaid come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is a compound formed from the prefix pre-, which comes from the Latin prae meaning 'before' or 'in front of', joined to 'paid', the past form of 'pay'. The verb 'pay' itself travelled into English in the 1200s from the Old French paier, which descended from the Latin pacare, literally meaning 'to pacify' or 'to make peaceful'; the underlying idea was that settling a debt brought peace between the two parties, since pacare was built on pax, the Latin word for 'peace'. The notion of paying for something before receiving it, captured by 'prepay', emerged in commercial English in the 1800s, and 'prepaid' became the natural adjective and past form. The word stays easy to spell once you see it as two familiar pieces, pre and paid, rather than one strange whole. Its peaceful Latin ancestor also survives in 'pact' and 'appease'.

How the word is built

• pre- (before)
• paid (past tense of pay, from Old French paier)