bounty

[boun-tee]

noun

plural

bounties 

1. a premium or reward, especially one offered by a government.

   There was a bounty on his head. Some states offer a bounty for dead coyotes.

2. a generous gift.

   Synonyms: benefaction, present

3. generosity in giving.

   Synonyms: munificence, beneficence, charity, liberality

bounty

¹

/ ˈbaʊntɪ /

noun

1. generosity in giving to others; liberality

2. a generous gift; something freely provided

3. a payment made by a government, as, formerly, to a sailor on enlisting or to a soldier after a campaign

4. any reward or premium

   a bounty of 20p for every rat killed

Bounty

²

/ ˈbaʊntɪ /

noun

1. a British naval ship commanded by Captain William Bligh, which was on a scientific voyage in 1789 between Tahiti and the West Indies when her crew mutinied

Other Word Forms

• bountyless adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of bounty¹

1200–50; Middle English b ( o ) unte < Anglo-French, Old French bonte, Old French bontet < Latin bonitāt- (stem of bonitās ) goodness. See boon ², -ity

Word History and Origins

Origin of bounty¹

C13 (in the sense: goodness): from Old French bontet , from Latin bonitās goodness, from bonus good

Synonym Study

See bonus.

Example Sentences

Its bright yellow election flyers are full of promises that the party guarantees EU membership "in the next four years" along with a bounty of European investment and maximum respect in the world.

From BBC

And death follows in books about talking corpses, cemetery folklore and the darkest days of World War II. Here’s a sampling of this fall’s bounty.

From Los Angeles Times

But if you had asked anyone a couple of months ago which would emerge as the hero of 2022’s midseason, their money probably would have been on the fabled “Star Wars” bounty hunter.

From Salon

“So yes, I am concerned that these were bounty hunters.”

From Los Angeles Times

That Altadena property would contain a bounty of that work — of correspondence to young artists and colleagues, of photographs, of the echoes of all the lively gatherings he and his wife hosted.

From Los Angeles Times

Related Words

• donation 
• gift 
• largess www.thesaurus.com
• premium 
• prize 
• reward 

When To Use

What does bounty mean?

A bounty is a reward, especially one offered in an official way for the capture of someone or something.This sense of the word most often refers to the reward sought by bounty hunters for tracking down and capturing fugitive criminals (or, in older times, killing them). A more recent use of the word refers to the reward offered for identifying a software vulnerability in a company’s or organization’s system.In a broader sense, the word bounty means a generous gift or generosity in general. This sense of the word is most often used in a poetic way, such as referring to crops as the bounty of the land. The H.M.S. Bounty, the ship aboard which the notorious mutiny occurred, was probably named after this sense of the word.Example: The bounty offered for the capture of Billy the Kid was $500—dead or alive.