Pay

to beat a person, or “serve him out.” Originally a nautical term, meaning to stop the seams of a ve el with pitch ( French , POIX ); “here’s the d‑‑‑‑l to PAY , and no pitch hot,” said when any catastrophe occurs which there is no means of averting; “to PAY over face and eyes, as the cat did the monkey;” “to PAY through the nose,” to give a ridiculous price,—an expre ive phrase of which no one seems to know the origin. Shakspeare uses PAY in the sense of to beat or thrash.