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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
payoff
noun
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ It was alleged that union leaders had received huge payoffs from the company's bosses.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ But companies will have to decide if the payoff is worth the effort.
▪ Here the reward or payoff acts in a negative way and is a form of punishment.
▪ Such switches between the two forms of reductionism have several payoffs.
▪ Tax policy would be ruled by stubborn one-third minorities, many among them cruising for policy payoffs to drop their opposition.
▪ The tavern payoff was in return for favors granted.
▪ What are your payoffs for letting these fears overcome you?
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
payoff

also pay-off, 1905, "winnings from gambling," from pay (v.) + off. Meaning "graft, bribes" first attested 1930. Phrase to pay off "be profitable" is first recorded 1937.

Wiktionary
payoff

n. (alternative spelling of pay-off English)

WordNet
payoff
  1. n. the final payment of a debt [syn: final payment]

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

  3. the income arising from land or other property; "the average return was about 5%" [syn: return, issue, proceeds, take, takings, yield]

  4. a recompense for worthy acts or retribution for wrongdoing; "the wages of sin is death"; "virtue is its own reward" [syn: wages, reward]

Wikipedia
Payoff

Payoff may refer to:

  • Bribery, an act of implying money or gift giving that alters the behavior of the recipient
  • Payoff, Inc. a Costa Mesa, CA-based financial services company
  • A payoff dominant equilibrium in game theory
  • Payoff matrix or payoff function in a normal-form game in game theory
  • Payoff set in set theory
  • Payoff (film), a 1991 TV film starring Keith Carradine
  • Gomez & Tavarès (AKA Payoff) a 2003 film
  • A word for slogan, used in some countries
  • Paying off, in British Commonwealth contexts, a practice originating in the age-of-sail of ending officers' commissions and of paying crew wages once a ship had completed its voyage; see Ship commissioning#Ship decommissioning
    • Paying off pennant, flown in some navies when a ship is decommissioned; see Pennant (commissioning)

Usage examples of "payoff".

Matthew Canfield, who seemed to gravitate to the nether world of the payoff, the bribe, the corrupt.

Crescent was some kind of a clearinghouse for him--a way to make his illegal payoffs look legitimate.

With nonunion workers, even with payoffs, the profit was 30 percent or more.

So once those rainmaking gals came over the horizon to threaten your winter wheat harvest with unseasonable rain, you thought you collected a handsome payoff in hopes of a dry harvest.

The memory of Ray Shaltie, of the escape, was one color, a favorite flavor, rattling down the payoff chute of his psyche.

Instead of a handsome payoff, the farm boy from Throt and the sullen bodyguard found themselves taken by the vindictive captain and left to die on the frozen shore.

If Saddam believes it highly improbable that the attack could be traced back to him and if the operation offers a high payoff, he might well decide to do so.

On April 2, the feds allegedly handed out a cash payoff to Judge Shenberg.

Those are the types of payoffs that crooked public officials customarily accept.

In dishing out such punishment, the Dade judicial system sent a message loud and strong: Payoffs are no big deal.

In the ideal, Sennett would tape several payoffs to these bagmen, confront them, make a deal, and get them to record the delivery of money to the judges.

The payoff from the reference work will come from understanding the proteins encoded by the genes.

The greedy swine had surely been taking a huge payoff from Jessyk, and was determined to have any eyewitnesses to their practices on Boniface removed forever.

Breckinridge knew that Forney owed his Senate job to Cameron and Lincoln, as a payoff for the enthusiastic editorials of his Philadelphia Press.

Fanine discreetly gathered evidence of a complex system of graft, payoffs and kickbacks, confirming CenComs suspicions.