owe.
To be under an obligation to give something back to someone or to perform some action for someone.
Meaning & usage
To be under an obligation to give something back to someone or to perform some action for someone.
We owe it to our children to make our nation a better place to live in the future.
I owe Kevin five bucks which he lent to me last week.
To have debt; to be in debt.
To have as a cause; used with to.
The record owes its success to the outstanding guitar solos.
Where this word comes from
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂eyḱ- Proto-Indo-European *h₂eh₂óyḱe Proto-Germanic *aiganą Proto-West Germanic *aigan Old English āgan Middle English owen English owe From Middle English owen, from Old English āgan, from Proto-West Germanic *aigan (“to own”), from Proto-Germanic *aiganą, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂eh₂óyḱe (“to possess, own”), reduplicated stative of *h₂eyḱ- (“to own”). See also own, ought. Cognate with Sanskrit ईष्टे (īṣṭe, “to own, possess”).
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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.