Word.ws English Dictionary

grease payments

grease payments is the plural of grease payment.

Meaning of grease payment

Noun

grease payment (plural grease payments)

  1. (US, idiomatic) A bribe or extorted money, usually relatively small in amount, provided to a low-level government official or business person, in order to expedite a business decision, shipment, or other transaction, especially in a country where such payments are not unusual.
    • Critics say there is no distinction between extortion and bribery, and that the distinction between a payoff (illegal) and a "grease" payment made to speed along normal duties (legal under the act) is unclear.1981 July 28, Peter Grier, “US curb on overseas bribes: too prim, or simply proper?”, in Christian Science Monitor, retrieved 09 Apr 2009

Questions about grease payments

What is grease payments the plural of?
Grease payments is the plural of grease payment.

Words near grease payments in the dictionary

  1. grease nipples
  2. grease one's gills
  3. grease paint
  4. grease paints
  5. grease payment
  6. grease payments
  7. grease pencil
  8. grease pencils
  9. grease pit
  10. grease pits
  11. grease pot

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: grease payments (page history and authors); grease payment (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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