| 释义 |
ˈpay-off
Also payoff.
[f. vbl. phr. to pay off (in various senses): see pay v.1]
1. a. Winnings from gambling or the paying of these. Also attrib.
1905F. Hutchison Johnnie the Gent 63 An' then there's the know-it-all-bloke that has just beat a couple of races, wit' about an ounce each way or maybe a deuce to peek. Oh, he's the wisest guy that ever give the pay-off gazebo the lofty leer when he reached for his dough. 1938G. Greene Brighton Rock iv. i. 149 ‘I've won, Pinkie. A tenner.’.. A young man with oiled hair stood on a wooden step paying out money... Spicer called out to him..: ‘Well, Sammy, now the pay-off.’ 1943Sun (Baltimore) 22 Apr. 18/1 This crowd backed New Moon confidently, the final payoff being $3.90 for $2. 1964A. Wykes Gambling vi. 142 If he throws a natural or crap,..the payoff odds will be considerably smaller. 1967Listener 10 Aug. 168/2 A zero-sum game is one in which the pay-offs cancel out to zero—I've won sixpence, you're sixpence down. 1970Globe & Mail (Toronto) 28 Sept. 20/2 How about the $800 daily double payoff the track made one day on a bet that never was made. Is that not bookmaking?
b. Criminals' slang. A confidence trick in which the victim is encouraged to venture a large sum of money by the success of a bet, investment, etc., involving a small sum or one furnished by the confidence tricksters. Also, one who employs this confidence trick (= pay-off man (a) (sense 5 below)).
1915G. Bronson-Howard God's Man iii. iii. 197 Specialists in check-raising, wireless wire-tapping, ‘the match’, ‘the pay-off’, and cards. 1928[see creep n. 1 d]. 1935Evening News 29 June 3/2 The sucker is induced to put a small sum into one venture. His winnings are promptly paid and he has visions. This is the ‘pay-off’. 1938P. J. Smith Con Man ix. 192 It is to his genius that the successful swindle known as the ‘Pay Off’ was attributed. 1943Police Jrnl. Mar. 69 Pay off, a confidence trick—Stock Exchange fraud.
c. The return on an investment; profit. Also, the point at which an investment begins to yield profit.
1955Times 5 Aug. 9/7 Countries which entered on the first stage would be relying on the second stage for their ‘pay off’. 1969Daily Tel. 11 Mar. 6/1 Profits in the past two years have been held back by the Woolco development and the pay-off here still could be a long way away. 1974Nature 1 Feb. 248/1 The spending proposals entail vast concentration of resources in areas which are likely to have a quick payoff. 1974Information Handbk. 1974–5 (Shell Internat. Petroleum Co.) 64 A major oilfield can represent an investment as high as {pstlg}400 million and it may take several years to reach pay-off. 1977Jrnl. R. Soc. Arts CXXV. 58/2 The second problem..was to ensure that a fairly early pay off was secured from the new investment—and this in an industry where long lead times seemed inevitable. 1978N.Y. Times 30 Mar. d. 5/3 The payoff in high-technology fields is extraordinarily great.
2. The payment of bribes; graft. Also, a sum of money given as a bribe. Also attrib.
1930(film title) The Big Payoff. 1935D. Lamson We who are about to Die xi. 193 Witnesses, juries, pay-off, fixin's—don't matter what it is... There ain't nothin' he won't do, long as you got the potatoes. 1938R. Chandler in Dime Detective Mag. Jan. 62/1 He took my gun and his payoff money. 1950Sat. Even. Post 27 May 20/1, I saw that in the Navy there's a lot of pay-off [graft]. 1958S. Ellin Eighth Circle (1959) ii. iii. 44, I never took a penny of pay-off money since I got into the Department. 1971R. Dentry Encounter at Kharmel xii. 219 Money for everything you've been through—a piddling wee payoff to close our mouths? 1976National Observer (U.S.) 4 Dec. 2/2 Tanaka is one of several Japanese officials accused of receiving $12 million in pay-offs from Lockheed for promotion of the company's sales in Japan. 1977New Yorker 22 Aug. 70/1 The scandal involving alleged political payoffs by agents of the South Korean government..first broke last year.
3. Criminals' slang. The division of the proceeds after a robbery.
1931G. Irwin Amer. Tramp & Underworld Slang 141 Pay off, the division of spoils after a robbery. 1935N. Ersine Underworld & Prison Slang 56 Payoff,..the end of a job and the splitting of the loot. 1935A. J. Pollock Underworld Speaks 86/2 Pay off joint, place where the plunder (loot) is divided.
4. transf. and fig. Result, outcome, conclusion; return, recompense; punishment; the settling of accounts (in criminal contexts, esp. by murder). Also, a decisive or crucial factor; ‘the ultimate’; ‘the limit’. Also attrib.
It proved unrealistic to attempt to separate the examples that follow into clearly distinct sections. Many of them stand contextually at the border of at least two senses or embrace more than one sense.
1927Vanity Fair Nov. 67/2 Conway's ‘That's the pay off!’ is swiftly making the rounds. It is employed when one enthusiastically describes anything that is first-rate: the acme, the last word! 1928J. P. McEvoy Show Girl xiii. 195, I thought show business was all laughter and applause... It's a headache. It's a pain anywhere you sit. And then imagine falling in love on top of it. That's the pay-off. 1930P. Annixter in Flynn's 11 Oct. 690 (title) The pay-off. 1932News (San Francisco) 6 Aug. 12/3, I wanted to take one of those pictures which show how the greatest pitchers of the game hold their pay-off deliveries. 1937N. Coward Present Indicative vii. 295, I had..lived far too strenuously. This [sc. a nervous breakdown] was the pay-off. 1937Sun (Baltimore) 4 Aug. 14/1 The white-hulled defender isn't as impressive out of the water as the polished blue challenger but that isn't the payoff in this million-dollar sport. 1940J. G. Brandon Gang War! ix. 93 It's a gang ‘knock-off’, or ‘pay-off’, whichever you like. 1944Sun (Baltimore) 1 Nov. 1/5 The payoff is that there is no such thing as an effective Japanese fleet today. 1952C. Day Lewis tr. Virgil's Aeneid ix. 189 The Fates and Venus have had their pay-off, in that the Trojans Have reached our fertile land of Ausonia. 1953R. Lehmann Echoing Grove 42 The final pay-off, the practical one that always has to be gone through when there has been a death. 1957Times 1 Oct. 11 It may be true, as Mr. Wilson said, that this economic crisis is ‘the pay-off for the Government's policy on the past six years’. 1958K. Amis I like it Here 200 He'd carried on in the same sort of way before, explaining he was part of the history of the English novel and all the rest of it, but this was really the pay-off. 1958Times 8 May 11/6 To these crews, their terrible bomb loads are the devastating pay-off element of a daring formula: at war—to prevent war. 1970G. Greer Female Eunuch 156 All that they have offered in the name of generosity and altruism has been part of an assumed transaction, in which they were entitled to a certain payoff. 1970G. F. Newman Sir, You Bastard v. 149 All the inconvenience and suffering, and this was the pay⁓off. 1971R. Dentry Encounter at Kharmel xii. 199 There was nothing to be gained from beating the hell out of this foul-mouthed creep... The pay off could wait. 1976Survey Summer-Autumn 45 Among the less apparent payoffs, one might well ponder the changes in regard to superficially non-political facets of Soviet life. 1977Time 28 Feb. 8/2 Danish Premier Anker Jørgensen wagered his political future in January and last week collected the payoff.
b. The climax or dénouement of a story, play, etc.; the point or crux of a story, etc. Cf. pay-off line (sense 5 below).
1947Wodehouse Full Moon vii. 141 A raconteur of established reputation expects something better than silence when he comes to the pay-off of one of his best stories. 1962W. Nowottny Lang. Poets Use iv. 96 Marvell's poem has its ‘pay-off’ in the ambiguity of the da capo with which the poem comes to a conclusion. 1969Listener 15 May 698/1 Some failed even to detect the snook being cocked at them in Mary's climactic confession that she'd ‘always worry about Jim’—a pay-off one could take nostalgically or ironically.
5. Special combs.: pay-off line, the point of a story; the ‘punch-line’ of a story, limerick, etc.; pay-off man Criminals' slang, (a) a confidence trickster; (b) the cashier of a gang of criminals; pay-off matrix, table Game Theory, an array specifying the utilities to the players of all the possible outcomes of a game.
1934J. O'Hara Appointment in Samarra (1935) i. 16 And they always knew when to laugh, even when it was a Catholic joke, because Reilly signalled the pay-off line by slapping his leg just before it was delivered. 1944[see bar-fly s.v. bar n.1 30]. 1965N. Coghill in J. Gibb Light on C. S. Lewis 61 We all laughed at this pay-off line.
1927Fresno (Calif.) Bee 9 June 1/3 The complaint asserts that Justice of the Peace Murphy was introduced to Frank E. Howell, former deputy sheriff, who was alleged to have been the ‘pay-off’ man of the contractors. 1928M. C. Sharpe Chicago May 286 Pay-off men,..confidence men (or women). 1932Sun (Baltimore) 27 Apr. 15/7 There were frequent references to checks made payable by Plummer to an unidentified ‘pay-off’ man. 1934[see number n. 3 e]. 1935A. Squire Sing Sing Doctor v. 59 They surrounded themselves with bodyguards, flunkies, killers, fixers, pay-off men. 1938D. Castle Do Your Own Time 287 Pay-off Man, cashier of a mob.
1952J. C. C. McKinsey Introd. Theory of Games i. 7 We shall henceforth describe such a game as this by giving merely the payoff matrix. 1971D. C. Hague Managerial Econ. vii. 138 The columns show the result of each act... The rows show the events leading to these possible results. Table 11 is therefore known as a payoff matrix (or table). 1974Anton & Kolman Appl. Finite Math. viii. 361 Games of the type described in this example are called matrix games and the matrix is called the payoff matrix. 1976Nature 8 Apr. 481/1 He..assigned payoffs for winning, losing, getting injured in an escalated fight and so on, and used these values to construct a payoff matrix for each strategy against all others. |