Short-pay
verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 To pay (someone) less than the amount that is owed; to underpay through error, omission, or miscalculation.
"A short payment occurs when a customer underpays their invoice... At times, a customer may short pay an invoice as part of a cash flow management strategy, choosing to pay less than the full amount to minimize their outflow of money."
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"A short payment occurs when a customer underpays their invoice... At times, a customer may short pay an invoice as part of a cash flow management strategy, choosing to pay less than the full amount to minimize their outflow of money."
Etymology
From short + pay, parallel to compounds such as shortchange. Attested in financial and employment contexts since at least the early 20th century.
More for "short-pay"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.