bribe
There have been allegations of bribery and corruption over a huge arms contract.
Large profits from organized crime provide ample funds for bribery of public officials.
The court has dismissed all remaining charges in the bribery scandal.
I used bribery - with food - to get a place in a workshop run by a couple of my furniture-maker friends.
Some cultures consider tipping waiters bribery, while in others it’s considered an insult if you don’t leave a tip.
The largest store in the country was caught up in bribery allegations.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Fraud & corruption
anti-bribery
anti-corruption
anti-counterfeiting
anti-fraud
Augean
defalcation
defraud
defraud someone/something of something
dolus
embezzle
impersonation
imposture
launder
malfeasance
malpractice
nobble
pyramid scheme
siphon
tax evasion
vishing

bribery | American Dictionary

bribery
noun[ U ]
us/ˈbrɑɪ·bə·ri/
the crime of giving someone money or something else of value, often illegally, to persuade that person to do something you want:
Charges of bribery and official corruption were made.

bribery | Business English

bribery
noun[ U ]
 LAW
the crime of giving someone, especially someone in a position of authority, money, a gift, etc. so that they will do something illegal or dishonest for you:
The organization was rife with bribery and corruption.
He was indicted in a bribery scandal over subway supply contracts.

Examples of bribery

bribery
He provides a staged genre analysis of the bribery event and shows which stages are constitutive, thereby demonstrating that certain so-called bribery episodes were not.
This is a recipe for bribery, since private citizens now have an interest in breaking the law.
Formal and informal economies were closely interlinked, and bribery was regarded as part of everyday life.
That bribery and blackmail resemble market transactions is not sufficient as a test of their legitimacy.
Under these circumstances, it is relevant to ask to what extent electoral bribery distorted the political wishes of voters.
These days, they do so barely more often than they admit to engaging in ' illicit ' practices like bribery or theft.
Members of the police were frequently involved or complicit in armed robberies, and often released criminals in response to bribery or political pressure.
It may be theoretically possible that these actors compete for bidding up the price of bribery rather than for policy.
While these offices hold the highly lucrative and coveted authority, office-holders are poorly paid, easy to be manipulated by gangsters through bribery.
The practices of political favouritism and bribery also represented a means of securing important positions.
This was not strictly illegal, so the charge was bribery.
Meaningful differences exist across the five categories, with perhaps the most serious charges (fraud, bribery, or corr uption) eliciting the lowest roll-call rate.
The second, ' canvassing for votes ', is a picture of electoral bribery : a voter sees no problem in taking money from two different electoral agents.
Specifically, the focus is on kickbacks in public procurement, the embezzlement of public funds and the bribery of public officials.
His words suggest that he was aware of strong moral reservations and that bribery was a possible way to reach the aim.
See all examples of bribery
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.