IOU.
I owe you.
Meaning & usage
I owe you.
Customarily, if you borrow $10 for lunch from a coworker, writing IOU $10 on a yellow sticky note acts as a legal promissory note that you will repay said amount on payday.
Where this word comes from
From the pronunciation of "I owe you". Attested since at least 1618.
An informal promissory note that is not a negotiable instrument.
When David couldn’t afford to match the money in the poker pot, he added an IOU for the remaining amount instead.
Where this word comes from
From the pronunciation of "I owe you". Attested since at least 1618.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.