PAY ATTENTION?

I've made the assumption that you are making reference to McTag's,

pay court
pay respect
pay compliments
pay attention

Am I mistaken, Robert?

It's figure of speech. An idiom. You're not neccesarrily paying Attention, whomever he/she may be. It's like saying lend me a hand, I'm not going to give you an actual hand.

No it's not. It's about a particular meaning of the word "pay", a meaning which you will find in any decent dictionary.

Our correspondent evidently wants to restrict "pay" to one meaning only, the one he's familiar with.
It's an example of an attempt at dumbing-down. A failed example, thank goodness.

Paying attention is the investment one makes to learn anything... Unfortunately, I am too poor to pay attention...

A joke, not particularly helpful in the circumstances.
But quite a good joke.

Oh I'm sorry, my bad, that's what my teacher said. She said it was a figure of speech because you are not actually paying Mr. Attention.

"I'm so broke, I can't afford to pay attention".
I suspect the phrase 'pay attention' derived from the "time is money" phrase (often used by Ferengi in Star Trek and Goblins in World of Warcraft).
If you're 'spending time' 'paying attention' to someone, you cannot get that time back to use for making money at some more profitable venture. Hence, the phrase "pay attention" should clearly be reminding you that you are "spending time" as you do it. Be very sure that the activity is one where you WANT to be 'spending time' because time, once spent, cannot be recovered.
I learned this in a college class on "Principles of Finance" during the topic "the true cost of doing things". Basically, when counting the cost of doing anything, you MUST include the TIME spent doing it that you can NOT spend doing something else that you might RATHER (or more profitably) be doing.

From the online Etymological Dictionary

I don't think William is interested in the Etymology of the word Pay.


The word has very little to do with problems in this world. Change the name to 'williwogs' and give it the same meaning...

Did you really put any thought into this? Do you understand the word 'pay' refers to a form of trade? Do you understand that 'wealth' refers to assets, and that money is 'representative' of assets? When you 'pay' you are trading the 'representative of assets' for a physical asset (or service). If a person creates with his own hard work 2 houses, while you sit by and watch - should he then give you one of those houses? What is equitable and fair to share?

In a society as driven by trade you could separate yourself - by paying for a big farm, then paying for farming implements, then paying for seeds and fertilisers, and paying for solar/wind generators, and paying for a loom to make your own clothing, and also growing the cotton to make the thread that you have to buy the spinning wheel to make into thread, and the leather tools to make your own boots, and well - the cows to obtain the leather, and the knives to slaughter the cows etc...well the list goes on in the ways you can avoid trade - but you have to pay for the tools and land to do so. Why should anyone give you anything for free that you haven't worked to create?

The original form of communinist ideology by the way, has already shown itself to be a massive failure. Mostly because it is so unfair to those that work hard/smart or have massive talent, that it demotivates people from trying to achieve.

i don't know more about