Owe

Owe

Verb · /əʊ/

Definition

To be under an obligation to pay money to someone; to be in debt to someone; to be obligated to give, do, or offer something to someone as a duty or in return for something received; to have something because of a particular cause — to owe one's success to hard work.

Origin

From Old English āgan (to own, to possess, to be in possession of — and therefore to be under obligation for), from Proto-Germanic *aiganą (to possess). The semantic shift from owning to owing being one of the most interesting in English: originally āgan meant to have, to possess. But to have something on trust — to be in possession of what belongs to another — implying an obligation to return or pay. The obligation sense gradually displacing the ownership sense, with own splitting off as the positive possessing word and owe retaining the obligation sense. A remarkable semantic bifurcation from a single Old English root.