noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of payday
Explanation
When you have a job, your payday is the day you get paid. You might wait to buy yourself a new outfit until after payday. Some jobs have a weekly payday — maybe Fridays are payday at the ice cream shop where you work. In other cases, you have to wait two weeks, or even a month, between paydays. You can also use payday to mean a sudden success or influx of money, either earned or won: "That movie brought a huge payday to its producers." Since 1932, there's also been a peanut and nougat-based candy bar called PayDay.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Some of them used credit deals arranged by the fraudsters or expensive payday loans to make the upfront payment.
From BBC ● Sep. 18, 2026
"A lot of people are just one payday away from relying on the food bank… that is a reality for a lot of people."
From BBC ● Sep. 7, 2026
Thirty-four years ago, a brilliant young hedge-fund manager helped engineer a $1 billion payday for his employer by betting a major currency would be devalued.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 13, 2026
A Tesla-SpaceX merger would give Musk a shortcut to his $1 trillion payday.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 11, 2026
On his first payday, he came home and called us all into the living room.
From "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls
“It’s just the process of it, man,” said Chargers safety Derwin James, who has earned a pair of hefty paydays after a training camp hold in of his own four years ago.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 30, 2026
Annual wages soared by as much as 7% — the fastest rate in more than 40 years — and job switchers won even bigger paydays.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 11, 2026
For early investors and executives, it could mean enormous paydays.
From Salon ● Jun. 13, 2026
High-school transfers have surged in Florida as players chase field time and winning teams in the age of big college paydays.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 14, 2026
I got by between paydays by neglecting overdue bills and borrowing money from Robin, so twice a month, when a few hundred dollars went into my account, it was gone within hours.
From "Educated" by Tara Westover
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
