bounty

noun

1. (uncountable)Generosity; also (countable) an act of generosity.

   “[H]is [Henry I, Duke of Guise's] gifts, though conferred for the interest of his ambition, appeared always scattered with an easy bounty.”

   “She embraced Elizabeth and said in a voice of half-suppressed emotion, "Farewell, sweet lady, dearest Elizabeth, my beloved and only friend; may heaven, in its bounty, bless and preserve you; may this be the last misfortune that you will ever suffer! Live, and be happy, and make others so."”

   “The enervating character of the climate, combined with the bounty of nature, which supplies the limited wants of the natives, in return for little labor, has from time immemorial produced a population within these zones essentially inefficient as compared with that of the temperate zone.”

2. (countable)Something given liberally; a gift.

   “[...] We have given and granted, and by theſe Preſents for Us, Our Heirs, and Succeſſors, do give and grant unto the ſaid Governors of the Bounty of Queen ANNE, for the Augmentation of the Maintenance of the poor Clergy, hereby conſtituted, and their Succeſſors, all the Revenues of Firſt Fruits and yearly perpetual Tenths of all Dignities, Offices, Benefices, and Promotions Spiritual whatſoever, [...]”

   “That in this age of boasted liberality, of peculiar Christian effort, of enlightened intelligence, and, let us add, in this free Commonwealth, the church should not be allowed to receive, use, control, and appropriate the bounties and charities of its pious friends, which accompany their prayers for her prosperity, we confess has not a little alarmed and astonished us.”

3. (countable)A reward for some specific act, especially one given by an authority or a government.

   “In recent years, AGeS, the Alliance Geological Service, has offered bounties to private individuals or teams willing to perform mineralogical surveys on the frontier.”

4. (countable, specifically, uncountable)A reward for some specific act, especially one given by an authority or a government.

   “In her six years as a bounty hunter she witnessed many things. Professional gunfighters who worked for hire. A U.S. Marshal who walked into a bar where five killers waited for him and strolled out a few minutes later with a warm gun in his hand and five bodies to bring back to Colorado.”

   “Nationwide surveys showed a decline in numbers [of crocodiles] from a variety of factors including dams in rivers, killing for skins and for bounties.”

   “Adam yawned. He and Matt had been drinking and talking the past few hours, mainly of the Underdog's bounty experiences.”

   “Many practices have long since become unnecessary or fallen from favour. For example, in the case of bubonic plague, bounties were paid to rat-catchers, who were required to kill the fleas on dead rats by dropping the rats into boiling water.”

5. (countable, historical, uncountable)A reward for some specific act, especially one given by an authority or a government.

   “It was in the army to which bounties were thus given to privates, that the memorialists were officers; and gallant officers the history of that war amply proves they were. If the soldiers of that army and even the heirs of those who volunteered their services for a given and short period, but who were killed or died in service, had such large recognized claims on the bounty of the nation, it is not, [...] easily to be perceived why their officers, [...] have not claims equally strong.”

   “There is, in this case, not a particle of evidence tending even to show that the soldier ever received any bounty or gratuity on account of any or all of his service except $66.66, two-thirds of the amount of bounty payable under the act of July 22, 1861, [...]”

6. (countable, figuratively)An abundance or wealth.

   “The bounty of Texas consists of a state full of rich living and traditions, stretching centuries back to the Indians, through the Spanish, Mexicans, and Anglos, to all the many nationalities that moved in and then spread out through Texas and the Southwest.”

   “America insulted the rest of the planet, thought Malik Solanka in his old-fashioned way, by treating such bounty with the shoulder-shrugging casualness of the inequitably wealthy.”

   “She [Kate Spade] would come to attach her name to a bounty of products, and ideas: home goods and china and towels and so much else, all of it poised atop the thin line between accessibility and luxury.”

verb

1. (transitive)To offer a monetary reward for the capturing or killing of.