pay attention

present singular third person pays attention · participle present paying attention · participle past paid attention · past paid attention

1. idiomaticintransitiveTo attend; to be attentive; to focus one's attention.

   Please pay attention to the danger signs.

   3 more examples

   I was on my way to the door, but all at once, through the fog in my head, I began to sight one reef that I hadn't paid any attention to afore.

   1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter IV, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC

   Just south of Wamphray station they overtook the runaway. The dim figure of Mitchell could be seen sitting huddled behind the stormboard. They shouted and whistled. He paid no attention.

   1950 January, David L. Smith, “A Runaway at Beattock”, in Railway Magazine, page 54

   The guard was paying no attention whatever to the running of his train, in total disregard of rules, and, as the recently-published report of a Ministry of Transport Inspecting Officer of Railways shows, there were other disquieting features in the case, such as ignorance on the part of responsible men of rules and appendix instructions and a lax attitude to regulations of which they professed to be aware, combined with failure to look at staff notice boards.

   1956 September, “Notes and News: The Barby Sidings Accident Report”, in Railway Magazine, page 638

   Synonyms: give heed, pay heed, mind, pick up what someone is putting down, take heed, tend, attend, clock