Bribes & associated terms (English)

[Bluepaint]

What is the name for a person who pays a bribe? (Besides unethical scoundrel )

Briber??

[Elenia]

(incidentally what is the word for a person who pays a bribe??).

bribee, maybe?

That crossed my mind! Quick, where's a non-native speaker, they often know stuff us natives don't!

Surely the bribee is the person receiving the bribe, just as the employee receives employment and the tutee receives tutoring...

A quick wikipedia lookup reveals that bribery can be any of offering, giving, soliciting or receiving a bribe. So, um. Yeah. Non-native speakers? Any insights?

What an English fail on my part. Can I blame only getting to sleep at 8am? Please?

That is a more than adequate reason!

(Besides unethical scoundrel )

Maybe you have something there. Like describing someone who commits the act of larceny as larcenous? Unless, of course, there is a word for that person, too.

Back to bribery, before I derail this log as well: both the OED and Merriam Webster have briber as a word, but neither offer definitions or examples. The Cambridge English dictionary doesn't have any such word, as far as I can see. Maybe we need a lawyer here...

[Speakeasy]

The Collins Dictionary offers "briber" as a noun derived from the verb "to bribe." A "bribee", if such a word exists, would designate the person receiving the bribe. I have never come across either term in practice and, to my ears, both seem somewhat contrived.

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/bribe

[IronMike]

What is the name for a person who pays a bribe? (Besides unethical scoundrel )

Briber??

I stand by my original (bribee) but I think the issue we found in the other thread is the verb pays (maybe it's just me?). Do you mean the person who is offering the bribe or the person who is receiving the bribe?

This happened often when I was in Kyrgyzstan. Rich parents would offer a bribe to their kid's teacher. So is the dad (offerer) the briber and the teacher (receiver) the bribee?

[Serpent]

The -ee suffix can mean both But in online dictionaries bribee is the receiver and briber is the giver.

[lavengro]

Back to bribery, before I derail this log as well: both the OED and Merriam Webster have briber as a word, but neither offer definitions or examples. The Cambridge English dictionary doesn't have any such word, as far as I can see. ....

For whatever it may be worth, Canadian jurisprudence, including from the Supreme Court of Canada, references "briber," with one outlier instance of "bribor" (in Alberta). I do not know what term the policing community may use, and I do not believe the term is defined in Canadian statute.

[dampingwire]

Back to bribery, before I derail this log as well: both the OED and Merriam Webster have briber as a word, but neither offer definitions or examples. The Cambridge English dictionary doesn't have any such word, as far as I can see. Maybe we need a lawyer here...

The OED has bribee ("The recipient of a bribe.") and briber ("One who offers or gives a bribe.", but that's definition #4).

I don't think I've heard either used IRL. The few legal pages I checked all used circumlocutions to describe the person who offers the bribe and the person who accepts it. All the other pages seemed to be dictionary definitions.

[Bluepaint]

Back to bribery, before I derail this log as well: both the OED and Merriam Webster have briber as a word, but neither offer definitions or examples. The Cambridge English dictionary doesn't have any such word, as far as I can see. Maybe we need a lawyer here...

The OED has bribee ("The recipient of a bribe.") and briber ("One who offers or gives a bribe.", but that's definition #4).

I don't think I've heard either used IRL. The few legal pages I checked all used circumlocutions to describe the person who offers the bribe and the person who accepts it. All the other pages seemed to be dictionary definitions.

There's really only one option. We all start using "briber" and "bribee" and help language evolve by eliminating this gap

[rdearman]

Isn't that just bribism?

[Teango]

This reminds me of a recent thread where vogeltje was looking for a single noun that could be used as an antonym for the word "show-off" but still incorporated into a positive statement or compliment. Suggestions such as "modest" and "humble" seemed to fit the bill but fell within the adjectives category, whereas a figurative noun such as "mouse" came close but conveyed a more negative connotation. I think my personal favorite was reineke's "self-effacer" (I've used this term myself in the past, although I wouldn't be surprised to learn it's a bit of unofficial creative nominalization). In the end, people just decided to make up their own words instead and send them careering out into the cosmos to fill this glaring lexical gap. With languages in constant flux, evolving dynamically over time and terrain, I can well imagine some of the words we invent or promote here today, such as "bribee", taking root in the Internet and appearing elsewhere tomorrow.

Returning to the search for a word to describe someone who "accepts a bribe", we often hear the word "corrupt" used to label someone who receives bribes (as in the phrase "corrupt politician"), but this corruption is not generally exclusive to bribery. Another word that might overlap in meaning is "mercenary", but I think the more accurate term to describe someone who receives bribes and who is susceptible to bribery is the word "venal", although I've rarely heard this adjective used in everyday conversation.