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bounty

 
Dictionary: boun·ty   (boun') pronunciation
n., pl., -ties.
  1. Liberality in giving.
  2. Something that is given liberally.
  3. A reward, inducement, or payment, especially one given by a government for acts deemed beneficial to the state, such as killing predatory animals, growing certain crops, starting certain industries, or enlisting for military service.

[Middle English bounte, from Old French bonte, from Latin bonitās, goodness, from bonus, good.]


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Thesaurus: bounty
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noun

    A sum of money offered for a special service, such as the apprehension of a criminal: bonus, reward. See law, reward/punish/deserve.

n. pl. -ies a monetary gift or reward, typically given by a government, especially a sum paid to army or navy recruits upon enlistment.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

 
bounty, amount paid by a government for the achievement of certain economic or other goals. It often takes the form of a premium paid for the increased production or export of certain goods. The bounty was an important technique of mercantilist economic policy (see mercantilism). Whereas a subsidy is a lump sum given for the purpose of promoting an enterprise considered beneficial to the public welfare, a bounty is given as a gratuity per unit of production. Bounties are usually in the form of direct cash payments. However, bounties can be in a concealed form such as exports relieved from payment of a tax or excise duty, special railway rates, rebates on taxes and import duties, credit facilities, and export credits guaranteed by the government. Effects of an export bounty can be destroyed by a countervailing duty imposed by an importing country. The compensatory export bounty is aimed at compensating producers for duties paid on imported raw materials used in making the particular commodity. Bounties also have been granted by states for the construction of roads, canals, railroads, and other public works, and they have been used by nations as an inducement to army enlistment. State governments in the United States have given bounties for the killing of animals regarded as destructive to livestock.


Law Encyclopedia: Bounty
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This entry contains information applicable to United States law only.

A subsidy paid to a category of persons who have performed a public service.

Bounty is the proper term to be applied when the services of several persons are sought, and each person who fulfills the offer is entitled to the promised compensation, as in the case of the killing of destructive wild animals. In contrast, a reward compensates a single service to be performed only once, such as in the capture of a fugitive, and, therefore, will be earned solely by the person who succeeds in this regard.

Under federal law, no bounty may be paid to induce any person to enlist in the armed services. A clothing allowance or enlistment bonus authorized by law does not, however, constitute a bounty.

Devil's Dictionary: bounty
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A cynical view of the world by Ambrose Bierce


n.

The liberality of one who has much, in permitting one who has nothing to get all that he can.

        A single swallow, it is said, devours ten millions of insects 
    every year.  The supplying of these insects I take to be a signal 
    instance of the Creator's bounty in providing for the lives of His 
    creatures.
                                                    Henry Ward Beecher


Wikipedia: Bounty (reward)
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A bounty (from Latin bonitās, goodness) is a payment or reward often offered by a group as an incentive for the accomplishment of a task by someone usually not associated with the group. Bounties are most commonly issued for the capture or retrieval of a person or object. They are typically in the form of money. Two modern examples of bounties are the bounty placed for the capture of Saddam Hussein and his sons by the United States[1] and Microsoft's bounty for computer virus creators.[2] Those who make a living by pursuing bounties are known as bounty hunters.

Contents

Examples

Historical examples

A bounty system was used in the American Civil War. It was an incentive to increase enlistments. Another bounty system was used in New South Wales to increase the number of immigrants from 1832.[3]

Bounties were sometimes paid as rewards for killing Native Americans. In 1862, a farmer received a $500 bounty for shooting Taoyateduta (Little Crow). In 1856 Governor Isaac Stevens put a bounty on the head of Indians from Eastern Washington, $20 for ordinary Indians and $80 for a "chief". A Western Washington Indian, Patkanim, chief of the Snohomish, obligingly provided a great many heads, until the Territorial Auditor put a stop to the practice due to the dubious origins of the deceased.[citation needed]

Bounties have been offered on animals deemed undesirable by particular governments or corporations. In Tasmania, the thylacine was relentlessly hunted to extinction based on such schemes. Gray Wolves too were extirpated from much of the present United States by bounty hunters. An example of the legal sanction granted can be found in a Massachusetts Bay Colony law dated May 7, 1662: "This Court doth Order, as an encouragement to persons to destroy Woolves, That henceforth every person killing any Woolf, shall be allowed out of the Treasury of that County where such woolf was slain, Twenty shillings, and by the Town Ten shillings, and by the County Treasurer Ten shillings: which the Constable of each Town (on the sight of the ears of such Woolves being cut off) shall pay out of the next County rate, which the Treasurer shall allow."[4]

21st century examples

Bounty hunters provided most of the prisoners held in Guantánamo Bay detainment camp.[5]

Other uses

The term bounty is used in the mathematics, computer science, and free culture communities to refer to a reward offered to any person willing to take on an open problem in that domain; for instance, implementing a feature or finding a bug in an open source software program.[6][7] Bounties are offered for solving a particular math problem — ranging from small lemmas that graduate students solve in their spare time for $20 US up to some of the world's hardest math problems.[8] Paul Erdős was famous for offering mathematical bounties.[9]

See also

Notes


Translations: Bounty
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Dansk (Danish)
n. - gavmildhed, rundhåndethed

idioms:

  • bounty hunter    skattejæger, dusørjæger

Nederlands (Dutch)
premie, bonus, vergoeding, gulheid

Français (French)
n. - prime, générosité, libéralité

idioms:

  • bounty hunter    chasseur de primes

Deutsch (German)
n. - Freigebigkeit, Gabe, Prämie, (econ.) Subvention

idioms:

  • bounty hunter    Kopfgeldjäger

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - απλοχεριά, γενναιοδωρία, δώρο, πριμ

idioms:

  • bounty hunter    κυνηγός επικηρυγμένων

Italiano (Italian)
taglia, dono

idioms:

  • bounty hunter    cacciatore di taglie

Português (Portuguese)
n. - generosidade (f), recompensa (f)

idioms:

  • bounty hunter    caçador (m) de recompensa

Русский (Russian)
щедрость, награда

idioms:

  • bounty hunter    охотник за людьми кот. не явились на суд, охотники за крадеными вещами/деньгами

Español (Spanish)
n. - prima, regalo, gratificación, subsidio

idioms:

  • bounty hunter    persona que persigue criminales

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - välgörenhet, gåva

中文(简体)(Chinese (Simplified))
慷慨, 恩惠, 宽大

idioms:

  • bounty hunter    为领赏而追捕逃犯者

中文(繁體)(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 慷慨, 恩惠, 寬大

idioms:

  • bounty hunter    為領賞而追捕逃犯者

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 관대 , 은혜, 상여금

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - バウンティ号, 恵み深さ, 賜物, 賞与, 補助金

idioms:

  • bounty hunter    賞金稼ぎ

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) هبه, فضل, منحه أو مكافأة ماليه‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮נדיבות-לב, פרס, מענק‬


 
 
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reward
armed services
blight

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Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Thesaurus. Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary Copyright © 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
US Military Dictionary. The Oxford Essential Dictionary of the U.S. Military. Copyright © 2001, 2002 by Oxford University Press, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/ Read more
Law Encyclopedia. West's Encyclopedia of American Law. Copyright © 1998 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Devil's Dictionary. Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce, 1911  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Bounty (reward)" Read more
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