1. Word finder
  2. Word definitions
  3. bribe

Find the word definition

What is "bribe"

Crossword clues for bribe

bribe
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
bribe
I.verb
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
accept a bribe
▪ The president’s family and friends accepted massive bribes in exchange for official favours.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
official
▪ False passports, employment agents, attempts to bribe immigration officials, the long uncertain wait.
▪ Money also serves to bribe the officials who have to take this decision.
way
▪ Nevertheless, he somehow bribed his way out of hospital to shoot down an impudent intruder strafing his base.
▪ Now you can bribe your way through any-thing.
▪ The report names companies prepared to bribe and bully their way to lucrative logging concessions.
■ VERB
try
▪ Or you can try bribing some one at the patent office.
▪ Last year a local deejay spent a month trying to bribe listeners into giving up information about the mysterious runner.
▪ Was it possible that she had tried to bribe the undertaker with her body?
▪ Nine businessmen from eight top conglomerates are being tried for bribing Roh.
▪ It takes a tremendous effort to stop, so: Be determined. Try bribing yourself.
▪ Combs on Thursday denied trying to bribe the man.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ He bribed a guard to smuggle a note out of the prison.
▪ He alleged that the manager had tried to bribe him during a business lunch in 1993.
▪ Judges are bribed or threatened into making decisions favorable to drug traffickers.
▪ Santo was convicted of bribing tax inspectors in Italy.
▪ The defence are arguing that he was bribed to withdraw his testimony.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Amateur name-grabbers, threatened with a court case, can usually be bribed to relinquish a valuable name.
▪ But in an entire career, I never knew a judge who I believed was bribed by raw money.
▪ Certainly he had bribed more border guards and Communist officials than he could remember.
▪ He bribed an operator at the transmat port to send us over to the space docks.
▪ If you wanted a judge bribed in Chicago, you used to come to my father.
▪ No clothes, no corruption, Fong had reasoned: how do you go about bribing a naked man?
▪ Or you can try bribing some one at the patent office.
▪ Wiedman molested the three boys in a Mesa hotel over three weeks, bribing and threatening them into silence.
II.noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
accepting
▪ In a separate but related case, Senator Michel Cogger was charged on Sept. 12 with accepting bribes.
■ VERB
accept
▪ Five police officers, including a general, are on trial for accepting the alleged bribes from Fininvest.
▪ She is alleged to have accepted a bribe used to finance an election campaign for the minister.
▪ Margaret was in complete agreement with her husband's refusal to accept the bribe of a bishopric.
▪ Yes, she would accept Eloise's bribes without knowing that bribery existed.
offer
▪ Nobody's ever offered me a bribe.
▪ Corruption especially hampered businesses, who were prohibited by law from offering bribes and faced penalties if they were discovered doing so.
▪ She returned to town again and again, she stood in lines, searched, offered bribes, petitioned.
▪ Only a minority of managers used threats, offered bribes, or criticized the competition to get their way.
pay
▪ Until his confession he had steadfastly denied that any of his companies had paid bribes.
▪ They broke or brushed aside the obstacles that stood in their way, and made no secret of paying any necessary bribes.
▪ The violent citizens sought to kill or abduct the Pope when Barbarossa refused to pay them an immense bribe.
▪ Official prices were low, but you had to pay with time or bribes to actually acquire anything.
▪ He received consecutive two-year sentences for five charges which included manipulating stock prices, paying bribes and insider trading.
▪ Guzman reportedly paid bribes to secure privileges not given to other prisoners, including alcohol and women.
take
▪ Half a dozen senior people in the energy ministry, recently sacked on suspicion of taking bribes, may well join him.
▪ Pay enough and it takes away the need to take a bribe.
▪ A mere 18 months ago members of his International Olympic Committee stood accused of taking bribes.
▪ At least in Chicago, they have better things to do: prosecute judges, aldermen, clerks who take five-dollar bribes.
▪ Corruption, taking bribes, failure to declare a conflict in interests have all constituted contempts. 4.
▪ Charles Becker, a policeman who took bribes, was tried for the crime and electrocuted at Sing Sing.
▪ First, a media sting operation caught several senior government aides taking bribes from arms dealers.
▪ He had accused the Minister of the Interior and police chiefs of taking bribes from drug traffickers.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ A customs official pocketed up to $500,000 in bribes for permitting cocaine to pass through the port.
▪ During his term in office, he took bribes ranging from 22 million to 220 million yen.
▪ Foreign firms willing to offer bribes typically win 80% of international deals.
▪ He offered me a cash bribe to help him secure the contract.
▪ He was arrested on charges of bribery and corruption.
▪ In all his years of public service, he has only been offered a bribe once.
▪ Some companies in Belgium and France had paid bribes for the award of contracts.
▪ The inquiry showed that bribery was widespread.
▪ The judge admitted that he had accepted bribes.
▪ The judge was accused of accepting bribes.
▪ The two brothers regularly used bribes and threats to further their business.
▪ There was widespread bribery and corruption in the police department.
▪ They paid millions in bribes to tax officials in order to avoid investigation.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Agnew was later forced to resign over a little unforeseen matter of bribes and tax evasion stemming from his years in Maryland.
▪ He was arrested by police, who he said, planted cannabis on him to extort a bribe.
▪ His lawyer says he was entrapped by overzealous prosecutors who wrongly characterized campaign contributions as bribes.
▪ In 1994, a major trial involving bribes paid by subsidiaries of Ferruzzi Finanziaria SpA in 1990 led to numerous convictions.
▪ Only a minority of managers used threats, offered bribes, or criticized the competition to get their way.
▪ The violent citizens sought to kill or abduct the Pope when Barbarossa refused to pay them an immense bribe.
▪ They insisted that the money was to cover legitimate expenses, and not a bribe.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Bribe

Bribe \Bribe\, v. i.

  1. To commit robbery or theft. [Obs.]

  2. To give a bribe to a person; to pervert the judgment or corrupt the action of a person in a position of trust, by some gift or promise.

    An attempt to bribe, though unsuccessful, has been holden to be criminal, and the offender may be indicted.
    --Bouvier.

    The bard may supplicate, but cannot bribe.
    --Goldsmith.

Bribe

Bribe \Bribe\ (br[imac]b), n. [F. bribe a lump of bread, scraps, leavings of meals (that are generally given to a beggar), LL. briba scrap of bread; cf. OF. briber, brifer, to eat gluttonously, to beg, and OHG. bilibi food.]

  1. A gift begged; a present. [Obs.]
    --Chaucer.

  2. A price, reward, gift, or favor bestowed or promised with a view to prevent the judgment or corrupt the conduct of a judge, witness, voter, or other person in a position of trust.

    Undue reward for anything against justice is a bribe.
    --Hobart.

  3. That which seduces; seduction; allurement.

    Not the bribes of sordid wealth can seduce to leave these ever?blooming sweets.
    --Akenside.

Bribe

Bribe \Bribe\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Bribed; p. pr. & vb. n. Bribing.]

  1. To rob or steal. [Obs.]
    --Chaucer.

  2. To give or promise a reward or consideration to (a judge, juror, legislator, voter, or other person in a position of trust) with a view to prevent the judgment or corrupt the conduct; to induce or influence by a bribe; to give a bribe to.

    Neither is he worthy who bribes a man to vote against his conscience.
    --F. W. Robertson.

  3. To gain by a bribe; of induce as by a bribe.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
bribe

late 14c., "thing stolen," from Old French bribe "bit, piece, hunk; morsel of bread given to beggars" (14c., compare Old French bribeor "vagrant, beggar"), from briber, brimber "to beg," a general Romanic word (Gamillscheg marks it as Rotwelsch, i.e. "thieves' jargon"), of uncertain origin; old sources suggest Celtic (compare Breton breva "to break"). Shift of meaning to "gift given to influence corruptly" is by mid-15c.

bribe

late 14c., "pilfer, steal," also "practice extortion," from Old French briber "go begging," from bribe (see bribe (n.)). Related: Bribed; bribing.

Wiktionary
bribe

n. 1 Something (usually money) given in exchange for influence or as an inducement to dishonesty. 2 That which seduces; seduction; allurement. vb. 1 (context transitive English) To give a bribe#Noun to. 2 (context transitive English) To gain by a bribe; to induce as by a bribe.

WordNet
bribe

n. payment made to a person in a position of trust to corrupt his judgment [syn: payoff]

bribe

v. make illegal payments to in exchange for favors or influence; "This judge can be bought" [syn: corrupt, buy, grease one's palms]

Usage examples of "bribe".

He bribed, begged, and wheedled drops of blood out of the fingers of hundreds of aguey East Indians.

Owning little attractive apart from his name, Calpurnius Piso, and his eminently respectable ancestry, Piso had needed to bribe heavily to secure election.

Gardner Alden from trying to get what he wants anyway - I tell you, Asey, he tried to bribe me!

We evaded that and then bribed this same Gaius Caesar to confirm Auletes in his tenure of the throne.

The cartel considered him adequate for paying Smith his bribes, and for balancing the ledgers at that bordello I mentioned, but Moore found out that cartel headquarters in Prussia considered their man not cutthroat enough to handle the next phase of their plan to crush us.

You bribed the former enumerator with both golds and your daughter, and blame me for their failings and yours.

Hamorians are high on parchment, but their enumerators are not so well-trained, and can be bribed by those of Hamor.

For near ten years that man murdered, stole, bribed and tortured his way across this land and others.

We arranged for the truck loaded with contraband, driven by a Matabele -detainee we had bribed, to be waiting for him on the Tuti road.

So he tied the dog to a tree and beat him with a kiboko until he could see his ribs sticking out of the meat of his back, then he took back the gold coins and cattle with which he had bribed him, then he beat him again and finally, still squealing like a bull elephant in musk, Taka-Taka went away and never came back to these hills.

Publius Sulla and his dear friend Publius Autronius, were discovered to have bribed massively.

I vowed months ago in this House that if it came to my attention that a consular candidate had bribed, I would personally make sure he was charged and prosecuted.

This was not dishonorable, as the bribed man would indeed vote the proper way, but then feel no pangs about giving evidence at a prosecution because he had been recruited to do just that before he took the money.

Off to Numidia the Senate sent the praetor Lucius Cassius Longinus, under instructions to bring King Jugurtha in person to Rome, where he was to be made to provide Gaius Memmius with the names of all those he had bribed throughout the years.

YIBC families to be iemporarily moved into his jurisdiction, then bribed them to vote for him.