conscience money
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.95 in modern English
26
Scrabble Score
15
Letters
3
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Money which is voluntarily paid by a party who feels guilt, and seeks to provide compensation, for some past misdeed or negligence.
Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "The Secretary of the Treasury is almost daily in receipt of installments of conscience-money, which the perturbed moral sense of a guilty office-holder or other defrauder of the government suggests the payment of in order to obtain "a still and quiet conscience.""
- ""Whatever I've done, I've always been criticized. . . . If I donated to a church, it was called conscience money; and if I didn't donate to it, they said I was mean and miserly.""
- "Other US companies, keen to be seen making the politically correct investment now, are bringing ‘conscience money’ to the new South Africa."
- "He described the aid work done by religious missions as "conscience money" to make up for the harm they have done."