Word.ws English Dictionary

grease someone's palm

grease someone's palm verb: to bribe a person.

Verb

grease someone's palm (third-person singular simple present greases someone's palm, present participle greasing someone's palm, simple past and past participle greased someone's palm)

  1. (idiomatic) To bribe a person.
    • I was never guilty of disloyalty to King Lewis, but I killed my wife's mother, pardieu!—which the judge seemed to think almost as vile, till I sent a friend to grease his palm with the last sou of my patrimony.1891, Arthur Quiller-Couch, chapter 11, in The Blue Pavilions
    • We arrived at Almaty Airport, and from the moment the customs officer made it obvious in his fractured English that our entrance would be made easier if we greased his palm, we realised that all our Anglo-Saxon assumptions about how societies are run were not very relevant here.2008 August 9, Tim Reynolds, “Traveller's tale”, in Sydney Morning Herald, Australia, retrieved 08 Apr 2009

Forms of grease someone's palm

third-person singular presentgreases someone's palm
present participlegreasing someone's palm
past participlegreased someone's palm
pastgreased someone's palm

Questions about grease someone's palm

What does grease someone's palm mean?
Grease someone's palm means to bribe a person.
What part of speech is grease someone's palm?
Grease someone's palm is a verb.
What is the past tense of grease someone's palm?
The past tense of grease someone's palm is greased someone's palm.

Words near grease someone's palm in the dictionary

  1. grease pencils
  2. grease pit
  3. grease pits
  4. grease pot
  5. grease pots
  6. grease someone's palm
  7. grease spot
  8. grease spots
  9. grease the skids
  10. grease the wheels
  11. grease up

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: grease someone's palm (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-grease someone's palm.ogg.

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