Please pay keen attention: The word ‘paid’ is not always a verb

Even in England and other countries the whole planet over in which English has developed into the mother tongue and – as in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda – even as the language of commerce, education, government, industry and supplication to the denizen of heaven, the word paid is known to almost every English speaker only as the past tense form of the verb to pay, which means to part with some hard value in order to acquire an equivalent value, whether hard or “soft”.

None the least, even in Australia, Canada, England, Ireland, New Zealand, Scotland, the United States and Wales – in all of which English has, for very many long centuries, been both the mother tongue and the commanding means of commerce, education, government, production and supplication to the deity – even there, very few individuals seem to have ever even heard of the word paid in any context other than as the past tense form of the infinitive to pay. 

PAYING

In the international marketplace – for centuries controlled only by certain nabobs based in insular Europe (Britain), continental Europe, North America and Down Under – paid has been among the most common verbs because paying, its continuous form, or receipt of payments is the kernel of all the means by which a small class of human beings gets fatter and fatter every day at the immense expense of the whole human species the whole planet over.

None the least, even as an ordinary substantive – even as an everyday noun – and even in non-commercial contexts, the word paid has been prominent in the English language (in and even out of England) for very many long centuries quite unremarked by most speakers and even teachers of that basically Germanic language (even with its acquired, overwhelmingly imposing and deeply troublesome Greco-Latin roofing).

NOUN

However, please pay keen attention to it because, the English word paid is not always a verb. Paid also exists as a noun. Indeed, as such, the word paid has nothing whatsoever etymological to do with the English verb to pay.  The English expression to put paid to makes it clear that the word paid is not even a verb form, does not come from and has nothing whatsoever etymological to do with the verb to pay.

 In this context, therefore, let us reiterate that the word paid is, in fact, a substantive. It is, namely, a noun. To put paid to, for example, an idea, is to render the idea completely unnecessary. It is to make the idea totally nugatory and, perhaps, even perilous to whomever has the tough luck to have to deploy the overwhelmingly troublesome language of England.

PAST TENSE

Let us reiterate it. Although, in everyday speech,  paid is the simple past tense form of the verb to pay, here paid has arrived into English from a different root to serve also as a noun; so that to put paid to, for instance, an idea or an article is to render the idea or article ineffective, nugatory, profitless, unserviceable, what-have-you.       

 Philip Ochieng is a retired journalist. email: [email protected]