Noun

(en noun)

A gratuity paid regularly as benefit due to a person in consideration of past services; notably to one retired from service, on account of retirement age, disability or similar cause; especially, a regular stipend paid by a government to retired public officers, disabled soldiers; sometimes passed on to the heirs, or even specifically for them, as to the families of soldiers killed in service.

''Pensioners depend on their pension to pay the bills

A stated regular allowance by way of patronage or subsidy, e.g. to meritorious artists, or the like.

Accommodations or the payment for accommodations, especially at a boarding house or small hotel in Europe.

A boarding house or small hotel, as in continental Europe, which offers lodging and certain meals and services.

A pension had somewhat less to offer than a hotel; it was always smaller, and never elegant; it sometimes offered breakfast, and sometimes not (John Irving).

(dated) A boarding school in France, Belgium, Switzerland, etc.

(archaic) A wage in active service

Noun

(en noun)

(feudal law) A right to the use of a superior's land, as a stipend for services to be performed; also, the land so held; a fief.

(legal) An inheritable estate in land held of a feudal lord on condition of the performing of certain services.

(legal) An estate of inheritance in land, either absolute and without limitation to any particular class of heirs (fee simple) or limited to a particular class of heirs (fee tail).

(obsolete) Property; owndom; estate.

* Wordsworth, On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic

Once did she hold the gorgeous East in fee .

* 1844 , , by (James Russell Lowell)

What doth the poor man's son inherit? / Stout muscles and a sinewy heart, / A hardy frame, a hardier spirit; / King of two hands, he does his part / In every useful toil and art; / A heritage, it seems to me, / A king might wish to hold in fee .

* 1915 , :

Cronshaw had told him that the facts of life mattered nothing to him who by the power of fancy held in fee the twin realms of space and time.

(obsolete) Money paid or bestowed; payment; emolument.

(obsolete) A prize or reward. Only used in the set phrase "A finder's fee" in Modern English.

* 1596 , (Edmund Spenser), (The Faerie Queene) , IV.10:

For though sweet love to conquer glorious bee, / Yet is the paine thereof much greater than the fee .

A monetary payment charged for professional services.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-07-19, author=(Peter Wilby)

, volume=189, issue=6, page=30, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= Finland spreads word on schools , passage=Imagine a country where children do nothing but play until they start compulsory schooling at age seven. Then, without exception, they attend comprehensives until the age of 16. Charging school fees is illegal, and so is sorting pupils into ability groups by streaming or setting.}}