bribery
noun
Simple meaning
Giving an illegal payment to a person in an official position as a means of influencing their decisions.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
brybereeSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈbɹaɪbɚi
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
The act of giving an illegal payment (a bribe) to a person in an official position as a means of influencing their decisions.
law
The activity of offering, giving, or accepting such bribes.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C1 · Advanced (estimated)
- Frequency
- Uncommon
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: The act of giving an illegal payment (a bribe) to a person in an official position as a means of influencing their decisions.
Used this way, bribery is a specialist word with a clearly unfavourable pull. It turns up most in technical or specialist writing contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Serious and weighty
- Usage feel
- Clinical and detached
Where it naturally appears
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Bribery of a purchasing agent in order to induce the agent to enter into a transaction.
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What Does It Mean Here?
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.