Noun

(en noun)

An addition of extra charge on the agreed or stated price.

Our airline tickets cost twenty dollars more than we expected because we had to pay a fuel surcharge .

An excessive price charged e.g. to an unsuspecting customer.

(philately) An overprint on a stamp that alters (usually raises) the original nominal value of the stamp; used especially in times of hyperinflation.

(legal) A charge that has been omitted from an account as payment of a credit to the charged party.

(Burrill)

(legal) A penalty for failure to exercise common prudence and skill in the performance of a fiduciary's duties.

(obsolete) An excessive load or burden.

* Francis Bacon

A numerous nobility causeth poverty and inconvenience in a state, for it is surcharge of expense.

(legal, obsolete) The putting, by a commoner, of more animals on the common than he is entitled to.

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.}}