fee
Pluralfees
Pluralfees
- 1Money you have to pay to do or use something, like joining a club or using a bank service.
Like paying to get into a fair before you can go on the rides.
The club charges a membership fee for access to the pool.
Visitors pay a small entrance fee at the museum gate.
UsageSay pay a fee or charge a fee: an entrance fee.
- 2Money you pay to a professional, like a lawyer or doctor, for their work.
Like paying a plumber for the time they spend fixing your sink.
The lawyer's fee for reviewing the contract was higher than expected.
We paid the architect a flat fee for the design work.
UsageOften plural: legal fees, doctor's fees.
Note
- 3Money paid or given to a person as payment.
Note
Less common meanings
- 4A type of land ownership that you can pass down to your family.
Like fully owning a house so you can hand it down to your children.
Owning land in fee means you can pass it on to your children.
The family has held the farm in fee for generations.
Similarfreehold
Note
- 5A prize or reward given to someone.
For though sweet love to conquer glorious bee, / Yet is the paine thereof much greater than the fee.
1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie QueeneHere, fee means a reward or prize.Note
- 6Something a person owns or holds.
Once did she hold the gorgeous East in fee;
1807, William Wordsworth, “On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic”Here, in fee means as her own, owned or held.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 BondageHere, in fee means owned, held as one's own.Similarpossession
Note
- 7To pay someone for work they do, or to hire 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” - 8In the Middle Ages, land a lord let someone hold in return for services such as fighting for him.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origin
From Old English feoh, meaning cattle, property, or money. It came from an old Germanic word for cattle or livestock.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 3 facts
- Fee derives from Old English feoh. en.wiktionary.org
- Old English feoh meant cattle, property, or money. en.wiktionary.org
- Feoh derives from an earlier Germanic word meaning cattle or livestock. en.wiktionary.org