fees

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of fee.

   Membership fees cover the cost of keeping the facility open.

   The court ordered the defendant to pay all legal fees.

   Note

   The plural usually names a stack of separate charges, such as membership fees, legal fees, or the small extra payments added on top of a price. The same spelling also pluralizes the property-law noun: an inheritable estate in land, held either in fee simple or in fee tail. Historically it also pluralizes the fief held in return for service. Context tells a lawyer's estates apart from a bill's charges.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of fee. Rare and old-fashioned.

   Note

   Here the word is a verb at work: someone fees a person, paying them to serve. Its object is the one hired, such as counsel or a gamekeeper, never the service bought. The meaning slid from rewarding to hiring and from there to bribing, so the surrounding words decide whether the payment is honest. It shares its spelling with the plural noun, but a following object marks the verb.

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