Other forms: bribes, bribed, bribing
A bribe is money or a gift given secretly to make somebody, usually an official, break the rules in your favour. Take a bribe, offer a bribe, a bribe of ten thousand.
It is a criminal offence to offer or accept one in most countries, and the noun for the practice is bribery. The verb takes a person: bribe an official, bribe him to look the other way. There is a very common domestic use with no crime in it at all: bribing a child with sweets to sit still, which everybody does and nobody calls corruption. Note backhander and kickback, which are informal words for the same thing.
1nounbribeMoney or a gift given secretly to make somebody act dishonestly.
“The bribe was paid in cash and traced within a fortnight.”
synonyms: backhander, kickback
2verbgiveTo give somebody a bribe.
“He tried to bribe the inspector and made everything worse.”
3verbpersuadeTo persuade a child with a reward.
“She bribed them with ice cream to get through the shop.”
bribe is a corrupt payment.
Old French briber meant to beg. A bribe was originally a piece of bread given to a beggar, and the word slid from alms to extortion to a secret payment — a rare case of a word getting steadily worse over six hundred years.
Old French
briber — go begging
Middle English
bribe
English, today
bribe
Built from
From Middle English bribe, from Old French briber (“go begging”), from the noun bribe (“a gift”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA