fee
An amount charged for a privilege.
Noun
- An amount charged for a privilege.
- late fee
- license fee
- admission fee
- An amount charged for professional services.
- legal fees
- consulting fees
- Imagine a country where children do nothing but play until they start compulsory schooling at age seven. Then, without exception, they attend comprehensives until the age of 16. Charging school fees is illegal, and so...
- An additional monetary payment charged for a service or good, especially one that is minor compared to the underlying cost.
- An inheritable estate in land, whether absolute and without limitation to potential heirs (fee simple) or with limitations to particular kinds of heirs (fee tail).
- A right to the use of a superior's land as a stipend for certain services to be performed, typically military service.
- Synonym of fief: the land so held.
Synonyms: fief
- An inheritable estate in land held of a feudal lord on condition of performance of certain services, typically military service.
- Synonym of possession.
- Once did she hold the gorgeous East in fee; - 1807, William Wordsworth, “On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic”, in Poems in Two Volumes:
- What doth the poor man's son inherit? / Stout muscles and a sinewy heart, / A hardy frame, a hardier spirit; / King of two hands, he does his part / In every useful toil and art; / A heritage, it seems to me, / A king...
- Cronshaw had told him that the facts of life mattered nothing to him who by the power of fancy held in fee the twin realms of space and time. - 1915, W.S. Maugham, Of Human Bondage, chapter 121:
Synonyms: possession
- Money paid or bestowed; payment; emolument.
- A prize or reward. Only used in the set phrase "A finder's fee" in Modern English.
- For though sweet love to conquer glorious bee, / Yet is the paine thereof much greater than the fee. - 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto X”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie,...
Origin
From Middle English fee, fe, feh, feoh, from Old English feoh (“cattle, property, wealth, money, payment, tribute, fee”) with contamination from Old French fieu, fief (from Medieval Latin fevum, a variant of feudum (see feud), from Frankish *fehu (“cattle, livestock”); whence fief), both from Proto-Germanic *fehu (“cattle, sheep, livestock, owndom”), from Proto-Indo-European *péḱu (“livestock”). Cognates Cognate with Saterland Frisian Fäi (“cattle, livestock”), West Frisian fee (“livestock”), Cimbrian biighe, viighe (“animal, beast”), Dutch vee (“cattle, livestock”), German Viech (“animal, beast”), Vieh (“livestock”), German Low German Veeh (“cattle, livestock, property”), Luxembourgish Véi (“cattle”), Vilamovian fi, fī, fii, fiih (“cattle, livestock”), Yiddish פֿי (fi), פֿיך (fikh, “cattle, livestock”), Danish and Faroese fæ (“cattle, livestock”), Icelandic fé (“assets, livestock,...
Forms
Related
Derived
absolute fee simple advance fee fraud advance fee scam alms-fee amenity fee attorney's fee base fee bullet fee composition fee conditional fee convenience fee court fee defeasible fee destination fee entry fee exit fee facility fee feeable feebate fee-fees fee fees fee-for-service feeless feepayer
Verb
- To reward for services performed, or to be performed; to recompense; to hire or keep in hire; hence, to bribe.
- In vain for Hellebore the patient cries / And fees the doctor; but too late is wise - 1693, John Dryden, “The Third Satire of Aulus Persius Flaccus”, in The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis:
- There's not a one of them but in his house I keep a servant feed. - c. 1606 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio),...
- We departed the grounds without seeing Marbonna; and previous to vaulting over the picket, feed our pretty guide, after a fashion of our own. - 1847, Herman Melville, Omoo: