Definition
To pay expenses for something, and thus be in a position to be in control.
To pay a monetary or other debt or experience unfavorable consequences, especially when the payment or consequences are inevitable or a result of something one has enjoyed.
Origins
Sense 1 is from the English phrase who pays the piper calls the tune; sense 2 may allude to the pied piper.
In Context
- "Those that pay the piper must command the tune."
- "Be off with you, my boy, and play with your caucuses and leading articles and historic parties and great leaders and burning questions and the rest of your toys. I am going back to my counting house to pay the piper and call the tune."
- "[T]he very constitution of society is based upon this volunteer system of paying the piper. Honest men pay the piper for rogues, and full purses for empty ones."
- "He wanted to get rich too quickly I suppose. . . . He's got to pay the piper."
- "Roosevelt never fully recovered his health, but he refused any regret. "I am always willing to pay the piper," he once wrote, "when I have had a good dance.""