pay to play
Any kind of charge to engage in an activityAny kind of charge to engage in an activity.
» Tom gets paid to play basketball.
CK · Tatoeba · CC BY 2.0 FRMeaning
2 senses(uncountable)Any kind of charge to engage in an activity.
Any kind of charge to engage in an activity.
(US, especially, uncountable)Campaign contributions (or outright bribes or graft) required to avail oneself of certain opportunities controlled by politicians, such as uncompetitive government contracts.
Examples
5 sentencesTom gets paid to play basketball.
I get paid to play basketball.
It doesn't pay to play video games.
Ziri was paid to play video games.
"I pay, you play, got it?", said Tom to the guitarist.
Origin
From the sometime practice of charging a fee for admission to a gambling game.From the sometime practice of charging a fee for admission to a gambling game.
Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Word family
1 related wordsRelatedpayola
Lessons for this word
1 lessons- A1Countable and uncountable nouns — Because it can be uncountable