What's the difference between bribe and ransom?

Bribe


Definition:

  • (n.) A gift begged; a present.
  • (n.) A price, reward, gift, or favor bestowed or promised with a view to prevent the judgment or corrupt the conduct of a judge, witness, voter, or other person in a position of trust.
  • (n.) That which seduces; seduction; allurement.
  • (v. t.) To rob or steal.
  • (v. t.) To give or promise a reward or consideration to (a judge, juror, legislator, voter, or other person in a position of trust) with a view to prevent the judgment or corrupt the conduct; to induce or influence by a bribe; to give a bribe to.
  • (v. t.) To gain by a bribe; of induce as by a bribe.
  • (v. i.) To commit robbery or theft.
  • (v. i.) To give a bribe to a person; to pervert the judgment or corrupt the action of a person in a position of trust, by some gift or promise.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) A former Berlusconi aide, Valter Lavitola, is also on trial for being the alleged intermediary in the bribe.
  • (2) Child age was negatively correlated with mother's use of commands, reasoning, threats, and bribes, and positively correlated with maternal nondirectives, servings, and child compliance.
  • (3) Also in June, a former welfare minister, Shlomo Benizri , was jailed for four years for taking bribes while in office.
  • (4) An IOC member for 23 years he has assidiously collected the leadership of the acronym heavy subsets of that organisation, which may be less riddled with corruption than it was before the Salt Lake City scandal but has swapped outlandish bribes for mountains of bureaucracy.
  • (5) That’s why many parents in North Korea have started bribing government officers even before their kids graduate high school.
  • (6) Nonetheless, Blatter was investigated by Swiss police over his attempts in secret to repay more than £1m worth of bribes pocketed by football officials.
  • (7) The Sunday Mirror went to court seeking an injunction to order the NoW to stop trying to bribe its staff.
  • (8) • Moldova's president offered a $10m (£6.4m) bribe to a political rival in a desperate bid to keep his defeated communist government in power , according to a secret US diplomatic cable.
  • (9) Most immediately in Zurich is the likely publication of a settlement made in court in the Swiss canton of Zug, in connection with alleged bribes paid to senior Fifa officials in the late 1990s by the marketing company ISL.
  • (10) Mohamed Bin Hammam, the disgraced former president of the Asian Football Confederation, has been linked to paying a string of bribes during the Qatari’s failed bid to become Fifa president, with some linking his activities to the concurrent Qatar 2022 bid.
  • (11) It has previously been reported that Brazilian prosecutors believe Maluf took bribes and construction kickbacks amounting to US$344m during his mayoralty between 1993 and 1996.
  • (12) He was responsible for securing vital uranium-enrichment technology, photographing centrifuge blueprints that a German executive had been bribed into temporarily "mislaying" in his kitchen.
  • (13) The rush to make a new offer on devolution, promised within hours of publication of the shock poll result on Sunday, triggered accusations of panic and bogus bribes.
  • (14) In 2010, FA chairman Lord Triesman was forced to resign after a Mail on Sunday sting operation captured him speculating about referees being bribed and, in 2004, FA chief executive Mark Palios quit after trying to cover up an affair with secretary Faria Alam.
  • (15) It was the same in the last game: women were there to nag you, or be bribed – whether with fancy dinners or cold, hard cash – into having sex with you.
  • (16) The majority of the US indictment was devoted to outlining complex schemes in which executives from Conmebol and Concacaf allegedly took bribes on TV and marketing contracts over decades amounting to $150m.
  • (17) Those borders remain hotbeds of corruption and abuse: traders are regularly harassed, sexually abused, or forced to pay bribes.
  • (18) Rolls-Royce was first dragged into the scandal in February after a former Petrobras executive alleged the group paid him and others bribes in exchange for contracts with the oil company.
  • (19) On Monday the company announced the settlement with the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), after accepting that its defence and civil aerospace divisions had paid bribes and corrupted officials and politicians around the world.
  • (20) The couple were detained last July soon after Chinese authorities accused GSK – one of Humphrey's clients – of bribing doctors and hospital administrators to sell its products.

Ransom


Definition:

  • (n.) The release of a captive, or of captured property, by payment of a consideration; redemption; as, prisoners hopeless of ransom.
  • (n.) The money or price paid for the redemption of a prisoner, or for goods captured by an enemy; payment for freedom from restraint, penalty, or forfeit.
  • (n.) A sum paid for the pardon of some great offense and the discharge of the offender; also, a fine paid in lieu of corporal punishment.
  • (n.) To redeem from captivity, servitude, punishment, or forfeit, by paying a price; to buy out of servitude or penalty; to rescue; to deliver; as, to ransom prisoners from an enemy.
  • (n.) To exact a ransom for, or a payment on.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The mother in Arthur Ransome's children's classic, Swallows and Amazons, is something of a cipher, but her inability to make basic decisions does mean she receives one of the finest telegrams in all literature.
  • (2) According to Ghazian, the regime cannot easily silence Ahmadinejad, because "he has two important assets: one is that he has the potential to act unexpectedly and, secondly, he has taken his opponents ransom by threatening to reveal their secrets to public."
  • (3) Professionals say the payment of ransoms by countries whose nationals are kidnapped encourages further kidnappings as they represent a guaranteed cash return.
  • (4) Other transactions are more blatantly criminal: Eritreans, who with Syrians and Afghans make up the majority of migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean, are often driven “for free” from Khartoum in Sudan to Ajdabiya on the Libyan coast, where they are locked up and tortured until relatives pay a ransom.
  • (5) At the end of 2010, AQIM had reportedly received €50m worth of ransom money since 2003, with each western hostage worth around €2.5m to the countries that paid up.
  • (6) A new criminal offence will be created to make it illegal for British insurance companies to provide cover for terrorist ransom payments.
  • (7) The mining giants have made enormous profits at the expense of Mirarr traditional lands,” he said, “and they are now holding the word heritage-listed area to ransom.
  • (8) He told delegates: "It cannot be right that 3,000 people should be able to hold the city to ransom, stop people getting to work and jeopardise the economic recovery when the measures we are taking to reform ticket offices are an inevitable consequence of the success of the automatic Oyster [smart card] system ... and when we are able to make these changes with no compulsory redundancies, with no loss of earnings and with no station unstaffed at any time.
  • (9) Ransome-Kuti made her name as an activist with a mass protest against policies that increased prices for market women.
  • (10) As "Darien", it was the lookout for Ransome's  boat‑loving kids.
  • (11) The official Anadolu news agency reported that no ransom had been paid and "no conditions were accepted in return for their release".
  • (12) Downing Street believed it had secured an agreement last year during the UK's presidency of the G8 which meant the group's members would not pay ransoms to terrorist kidnappers.
  • (13) As for the name, we have already pointed out the possibility that he could have used different identities.” But Calantropo said that while the accused man had indeed been briefly in touch with actual smugglers, he did so to ensure the release of three friends held for ransom by smugglers.
  • (14) What the State Department admitted today was the dictionary definition of a ransom payment and a complete contradiction of what they were saying just two weeks ago.
  • (15) (via @ dylanbyers ) Jamie Dupree (@jamiedupree) White House statement on meeting somewhat tough: "we will not pay a ransom for Congress reopening the government" October 14, 2013 John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) So...why even have a meeting?
  • (16) The US refuses to pay ransom for hostages, and, Diane Foley said, even threatened to prosecute the Foley family for raising money to do so, while European countries do pay.
  • (17) He said the pair's freedom was due in large part to the "professionalism" of Foreign Office officials and backed the UK's stance of not engaging in ransom talks.
  • (18) An exasperated David Cameron lectured fellow world leaders on Thursday night telling them not to succumb to Islamic State's ransom demands, as he warned at the Nato summit in Wales that such payouts merely funded more terrorism against the west.
  • (19) Sunday's attack in Tripoli targeted the Islamist lawmakers and officials Hifter blames for allowing extremists to hold the country to ransom, his spokesman Mohammed al-Hegazi told Libyan television.
  • (20) George Christopoulos, his press secretary, and Isaac Ransom, his deputy, resigned "on principle", according to CBC News.