fee

Less common meanings

4. 4
   inheritable ownershipnoununcountable

   A form of inheritable ownership of land, either unlimited as to heirs (fee simple) or restricted to certain heirs (fee tail).

   She acquired the manor in fee, free to sell or bequeath it as she wished.

   The two brothers each held their portions in fee simple after the partition.

   Similarfreehold

   Note

   Here the word's French side takes over. Old English feoh blended with Old French fieu, fief, which came from a Frankish word for livestock. That strand gives English its land-law vocabulary. The qualifiers follow the noun: fee simple, fee tail. The bare phrase in fee signals inheritable ownership. Simple or tail then says whether any class of heirs is required. Source

   Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 6 facts

   • English fee combines Old English feoh with influence from Old French fieu and fief. en.wiktionary.org
   • The French forms derive ultimately from a Frankish word meaning livestock. en.wiktionary.org
   • The French strand supplies the landholding sense. gutenberg.org
   • Simple and tail follow fee in these legal terms. en.wikipedia.org
   • In fee indicates inheritable ownership. en.wiktionary.org
   • Fee simple has unrestricted potential heirs, whereas fee tail restricts inheritance to specified kinds of heirs. en.wikipedia.org
5. 5
   nounobsolete

   A prize or reward given for an accomplishment or service.

   For though sweet love to conquer glorious bee, / Yet is the paine thereof much greater than the fee.

   1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene

   Note

   Spenser's The Faerie Queene, in Book IV (1596), shows the old sense at work: the pain of winning love is "much greater than the fee," the reward it earns. As a free-standing word for a prize, this is obsolete. An echo of it survives in finder's fee, the reward owed to whoever turns something up. Anywhere else, reward or prize is the modern choice.

6. 6
   nounobsoletefiguratively

   A possession; something held or owned, used figuratively.

   Once did she hold the gorgeous East in fee;

   1807, William Wordsworth, “On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic”

   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

   Similarpossession

   Note

   The figurative sense lives on in one literary phrase: to hold something in fee, meaning to possess it wholly. Wordsworth has Venice holding "the gorgeous East in fee" in 1807, Lowell uses the phrase in 1843, and Maugham still reaches for it in Of Human Bondage (1915). Outside that phrase the sense is obsolete. Inside it, the feudal echo of land held of a lord gives the boast its grandeur.

   In her old age she held the whole garden in fee, every rose and every weed.

   The poet imagined a mind that held all history in fee.

7. 7
   verbarchaic

   To pay or reward someone for services, to hire them, or by extension to bribe them.

   There's not a one of them but in his house I keep a servant feed.

   c. 1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”
8. 8
   noun

   Historical: an estate in land, or the right to hold and use it, granted by a feudal lord in return for services such as military service; a fief.