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Perquisite   Listen
noun
Perquisite  n.  
1.
Something gained from a place or employment over and above the ordinary salary or fixed wages for services rendered; examples are, a fee allowed by law to an officer for a specific service; the use of a company automobile or other company property.
Synonyms: perk. "The pillage of a place taken by storm was regarded as the perquisite of the soldiers." "The best perquisites of a place are the advantages it gaves a man of doing good."
2.
pl. (Law) Things gotten by a man's own industry, or purchased with his own money, as opposed to things which come to him by descent.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Perquisite" Quotes from Famous Books



... confectioner's: more lemons and sugar spent in boiling fish to serve at one meal than might well serve the whole expense of the house in a day." He goes on to describe and ridicule the new fashion of placing arms and crests on the dishes. It seems that all the refuse was the perquisite of the cook and his subordinates in a regulated proportion, and the same in the bakery and other branches; but, as may be supposed, in these matters gross ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt

... prevent it from achieving permanent success. Historians have been fond of showing how the vitality of the whole system was impaired by wholesale slave-labour, by the false political economy which taxes all for the benefit of a few, by the debauching view of civil office which regards it as private perquisite and not as public trust, and—worst of all, perhaps—by the communistic practice of feeding an idle proletariat out of the imperial treasury. The names of these deadly social evils are not unfamiliar to American ears. Even of the last we have heard ominous whispers in the shape of bills to ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske

... sacrificial systems of a pre-Christian age. Sheep, rams, bullocks, fowls are given sacrificial salt to lick, and then sacrificed by the priest and deacon, who has the levitical portions of the victim as his perquisite. In Armenia the Greek word agape has been used ever since the 4th century to indicate these sacrificial meals, which either began or ended with a eucharistic celebration. The earlier usage of the Armenians is expressed in the two following rules recorded against ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... may know my letters by the paper and the folding. For the former, I live on scraps obtained in charity from an old friend, whose stationery is a permanent perquisite; for folding, I shall do it neatly when I learn to tie my neckcloths. I surprise most of my friends by writing to them on ruled paper, as if I had not got past pothooks and hangers. Sealing-wax I have none on my establishment; wafers of the coarsest bran supply its place. When my epistles come to ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb

... of young Stewart and Marie Jedlicka were not moving smoothly. Having rented their apartment to the Boyers, and through Marie's frugality and the extra month's wages at Christmas, which was Marie's annual perquisite, being temporarily in funds the sky seemed clear enough, and Walter Stewart started on his holiday with a comfortable sense of ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... and intolerance reduced life to a gross and dismal inertia. Except in their patronage of music, the ecclesiastical princes had perhaps rendered no single service to Germany. The Free Cities, as a rule, were sunk in debt; the management of their affairs had become the perquisite of a few lawyers and privileged families. For Germany, as a nation, the destruction of these petty sovereignties was not only an advantage but an absolute necessity. The order by which they were superseded was not devised in the interest of Germany itself; yet even in the arrangements imposed ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... all over her Ladyship's Petticoat; then do they curse their unlucky Hands, and beg ten thousand Pardons for the Mischance; and threaten to go to India, but they will match the Set, so as not to be distinguish'd by the nicest Judgment. The whole Suit of Clothes, perhaps, becomes the Perquisite of my Lady's Woman, and the Set of China is not to be match'd in the Kingdom. The Dealers soon get Intelligence of the Accident, from the Person by whose Hands it was done; and the Lady is teaz'd almost to death with People shewing her ...
— The Tricks of the Town: or, Ways and Means of getting Money • John Thomson

... whole of the cuscus and part of the kangaroo. The other part we supposed she had claimed as her perquisite. She then made signs to us that we were to remain. Who she was we could not tell, but we concluded that she was a chief's daughter, or, at all events, a person of great influence and probably of rank among them. ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... school without discrimination. It must be conceded that by this means he never failed to catch the guilty mischief-maker. The school-year was divided into terms of three months, the teacher being paid in each term a certain sum—three dollars, I think, for each pupil-and having an additional perquisite in the privilege of boarding around at his option in the different families to which his scholars belonged. This feature was more than acceptable to the parents at times, for how else could they so thoroughly learn all the neighborhood gossip? But the pupils were in almost unanimous ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... Life-or-Death, Rouge et Noir, as played between the Doctor and the Sexton, this five per cent., this certain small injury entering into the chances is clearly the sexton's perquisite for keeping the green table, over which the game is played, and where he hoards up his gains. Suppose a blister to diminish a man's pain, effusion or dyspnoea to the saving of twenty per cent. in vital force; his profit from it is fifteen, in that case, for it always hurts him five ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... at the tannery, were their proper pay. Raften never allowed his son to kill the calves. "Oi can't kill a poor innocent calf mesilf an' I won't hev me boy doin' it," he said. Thus Sam was done out of a perquisite, and ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton

... existed among a class of people, known as piece-sorters. The sale of these cuttings by weight and for cash brought the master-tailors a pleasant little revenue, which was the more prized as it was a sort of perquisite. The masters were able to command payment for their cuttings in advance, and the sorter would call to collect them week by week as they accumulated, till the amount he had advanced was exhausted. Quarriar would set up as a piece-sorter, ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... whom the Japanese have not parted, and in China there are none. Of all of those who have gone none served his employers more faithfully than did McGiffin. At a time when every official robbed the people and the Government, and when "squeeze" or "graft" was recognized as a perquisite, McGiffin's hands were clean. The shells purchased for the Government by him were not loaded with black sand, nor were the rifles fitted with barrels of iron pipe. Once a year he celebrated the Thanksgiving Day of his own country by inviting ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis

... His tone had changed her mood suddenly; a memory flashed on her of the ill-written letter which Emma had shown her of the phrases concerning the spiritual "bride" or "guide" who, even if all licence were denied to humbler folk, was to be a prophet's special perquisite. "What have you been ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall

... serves me, there were no other pictures in this exclusive hostelry; and I was not surprised to learn that the landlord was an ex-butler, the landlady an ex-lady's-maid, from the great house; and that the bar-parlour was a sort of perquisite of former servants. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... his canny and douce behaviour, and, as I have observed before, a weaver to his trade. The cot and the kail-yard were his own, and had been auld granfaither's; but still he had to ply the shuttle from Monday to Saturday, to keep all right and tight. The thrums were a perquisite of my own, which I niffered with the gundy-wife for ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir

... Pigeon replied. "In this city it's the Volunteer's perquisite to be played through by any corps he happens to meet on his way to the cemetery. And they make the most ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... lad had been already bared, as a preliminary to his decapitation. People were surprised to see such a rich cloak in the possession of the executioner, but were told that it was the one given by Beatrice to Marzio to pledge him to the murder of her father, which fell to the executioner as a perquisite after the execution of the assassin. The sight of the great assemblage of people produced such an effect upon the ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... ceremonies prescribed by their religion. Part of it was dressed for supper, after which a dispute arose between one of the negroes and Johnson, the interpreter, about the sheep's horns. The former claimed the horns as his perquisite, as he had performed the office of butcher, and Johnson disputed the claim. To settle the matter, Mr. Park gave a horn to each ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... it is only the letter which he thinks that the young woman may carry that the noble Ramiro wants. Doubtless it has to do with the sacred affairs of the Church. Any valuables about them we may keep as a perquisite over and ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... and of joyous inspiration. Just as Wesley once asked why the devil should have all the best tunes, so to-day men are beginning to ask why the human body, the most divine melody at its finest moments that creation has yielded, should be allowed to become the perquisite of those who lust for the obscene. And some are, further, convinced that by enlisting it on the side of purity and strength they are raising the most powerful of all bulwarks against the invasion of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... is allowed as a perquisite on each whole passenger, 1s. of which to the agent at Cuxhaven for every whole passenger embarking for England, and the other 6d. to the agent at Yarmouth; and in like manner 1s. to the agent at Yarmouth on every whole passenger embarking for the Continent, and 6d. to the agent at Cuxhaven; but no ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde

... judged practicable, the local postmasters are at liberty, on their own discretion, to employ penny-post carriers to deliver letters at the houses of the people, charging 1d. each for delivery, which is a private perquisite—the department taking neither profit nor responsibility in the case. Persons who do not choose to pay the penny-post can refuse to receive letters in that way, and obtain them by ...
— Cheap Postage • Joshua Leavitt

... Glen——; but when I came to account for my appearance at Moyabel, her confusion satisfied me that the motive was already known. I felt suddenly conscious of having been dreaming about her; and I knew that a fevered man's dream is his nurse's perquisite: dissimulation, after what I knew and suspected to have passed, would have been as impossible as repugnant. So then and there, among that mellow sunset in the sick chamber, I confessed to her how my whole thoughts had been haunted by her image, since the time ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various

... two sols' worth. All the same I advise you to be content with what you get from the kitchen, without troubling about the price, for I usually have provision made for four, though I dine alone, and the rest is the cook's perquisite. I merely advise you to the best of my ability, and I hope you will not be offended at my ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... Western civilisation, from the seventh century to the fourteenth, the personal equation was largely merged in the territorial. One and all, master and man, lord and tenant, were "tied to the soil." Within the manor there was first the land held in demesne, the "in-land"—this was the perquisite of the lord himself; it was farmed by him directly. Only when modern methods began to push out the old feudal concepts do we find this portion of the estate regularly let out to tenants, though there are evidences of its occasionally having been ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett

... a roof of echoes that is wonderful,—a mirror of sound hung over the head of an official who opens his mouth for centimes to drop there. You sing notes up into it (or rather you don't, for that is his perquisite), and they fly circling, and flock, and become a single chord stretching two octaves: till you feel that you are living inside what in the days of our youth would have been called "the sound ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous

... paper money in circulation, and we were told that the banks of the city of Havana actually paid it out knowingly over their own counters, mixed in with genuine bills,—a presumed perquisite of the bank officers! This unprecedented fraud was not put a stop to until the merchants and private bankers threatened to have the doors of the banks closed by popular force if the outrage was longer continued. Could such a public fraud be carried ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... the queen with ten thousand pounds a-year to defray the expenses of intelligence; and to have pocketed a deduction of two and a half per cent, from the pay of the foreign troops maintained by England. It was alleged, in his justification, that the present from the Jew was a customary perquisite, which had always been enjoyed by the general of the Dutch army; that the deduction of two and a half per cent, was granted to him by an express warrant from her majesty; that all the articles of the charge joined together did not exceed thirty ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... correct orthography would be "umble pie," without the aspirate. Bailey, in his valuable old Dictionary, traces the word properly to umbilicus, the region of the intestines, and acknowledges in his time the perquisite ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.12 • Various

... now before me, in its rich red cover, elegantly emblazoned with the royal arms; for it is the very Bible that was placed before queen Charlotte at her coronation in 1761; and which, becoming the perquisite of a prebendary of Westminster, was by his wife presented to my mother, to whom she stood sponser. This royal Bible was highly prized; and it was with special favor that it was opened for us when we had been ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth

... kind! Think what your reticence has wrought for us; How all the fat sent down unto the maidWho likes not fat—for such maids never do— Has been put in the waste-tub, sold for grease, And pocketed as servant's perquisite! Oh, wife! this news is good; for since, perforce, A joint must be not fat nor lean, but both; Our different tastes will serve our purpose well; For, while you eat the fat—the lean to me Falls as my cherished portion. Lo! 'tis good!" So ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... the poor beast has become!" Here he pinched the sides and thighs of the victim. "Still," he said, "there is some flesh yet on these bones. You may grill the paws, fricassee the shoulders, and roast the rest. The rognons and the head accept for yourself as a perquisite." Here he transferred Fox to the arms of the concierge, adding, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... classed. Getting up early. Ghosts, some, presumed fidgety, (but see Stilling's Pneumatology.) Giants formerly stupid. Gideon, his sword needed. Gift of tongues, distressing case of. Gilbert, Sir Humphrey. Globe Theatre, cheap season-ticket to. Glory, a perquisite of officers, her account with B. Sawin, Esq. Goatsnose, the celebrated interview with. God, the only honest dealer. Goings, Mehetable, unfounded claim of, disproved. Gomara, has a vision, his relationship to the Scarlet Woman. Governor, our excellent. Grandfather, Mr. Biglow's, safe ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... Horsford county had borne a great deal from negro-domination. New men had come into office by means of colored votes, and the old set to whom office had become a sort of perquisite were deprived thereby of this inherited right. The very presence of Nimbus and a few more who like him were prosperous, though in a less degree, had been a constant menace to the peace of a community ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... could raise a small Sum— Would not twenty Guineas, think you, move him? —Of all the Arguments in the way of Business, the Perquisite is the most prevailing— Your Father's Perquisites for the Escape of Prisoners must amount to a considerable Sum in the Year. Money well tim'd, and properly ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay

... New Year's Day, and after having heard her mistress go out, Anna, sore at heart, reminded herself that were she now in service in Germany she would have already received this morning a really handsome money gift, more a right than a perquisite, from her mistress. She did not remind herself that this yearly benefaction is always demanded back by a German employer of his servant, if that servant is discharged, owing to her own fault, ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... a pack of cards, one of the identical two packs with which the Queen played Patience the evening he was at Windsor. They were the perquisite of a page who brought them to him. He was much pleased with the Queen and thought her much prettier than any representation of her which we have seen, and with a very sweet expression. Lady Holland ...
— Letters from England 1846-1849 • Elizabeth Davis Bancroft (Mrs. George Bancroft)

... dismissing "four hired men." He had previously sought to charge their stipends upon the shares, although bound by agreement to defray these expenses out of the money derived from the galleries—at this time, perhaps, a managerial perquisite. But in addition to the servitors, as the representatives of minor and mute characters, there were also available the journeymen or apprentices of the more eminent performers. If they paid no premium upon being articled, novices were at any rate bound in return for the ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... to their credit if true, that when a seaman died, and was reported to them, they exclaimed: "Poor fellow! bring me his bag, and mind everything belonging to him is put into it." This they considered their perquisite. Surely this is wrong and robbery! Ah, Mr. Hume! why were you a puling, helpless babe at that time? Had you been a man and known it, you would have called for reformation and been the ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman

... were to organize the Legion of the West, not to lead it to victory, as you surely would have done had opportunity offered. Hamilton secured the leadership as his perquisite and was careful to see that I was not advanced. He dissuaded Washington from choosing me quartermaster. But they could not obscure my name nor dim your reputation. The people know what is what and who is who. They know 'little Burr' and they know ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... and I shall here add one circumstance to the honour of Monsieur de Grange, a captain under the general. When taken by the Brilliante, the soldiers stripped us, considering our clothes as the usual perquisite of conquerors; on which that gentleman generously gave me a handsome suit of clothes, two pair of silk stockings, shirts, a hat and wig, and every thing accordant, so that I was rather a gainer by ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... in those days—were hanging out his colours. He hears, too, how the Mercers' Company were making a statue of his gracious Majesty to set up in the Exchange. Ah! Pepys's heart is merry: he has forty shillings (some shabby perquisite) given him by Captain Cowes of the 'Paragon;' and 'my lord' in the evening 'falls to singing' a song upon the Rump to ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... was aware that eccentricity has always been a perquisite, as it were the special luxury, of the well-born and of the well-educated. Scholars, as she well knew, are never quite like other people, and her new lodger was undoubtedly a scholar. "Surely I had a bag when I came in?" he said ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... pleasant. But at this moment he was very much put out. His covert had been found full of red herrings and strychnine, and his fox had been poisoned. He had lost his guinea on the day of the hunt, the guinea which would have been his perquisite had they found a live fox in his wood. And all this was being done by such a fellow as Goarly! And now this abandoned wretch was bringing an action against his Lordship and was leagued with such men as Scrobby and Bearside! It was a dreadful ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope

... who perform the work of the butcher; hence all are eager to render service in that line. Each tribe has its own way of cutting up and distributing an animal. Among the Makololo the hump and ribs belong to the chief; among the Bakwains the breast is his perquisite. After the oxen are cut up, the different joints are placed before Sekeletu, and he apportions them among the gentlemen of the party. The whole is rapidly divided by their attendants, cut into long strips, and so many of these are thrown into the fires at once that they are ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... over the animal to the executioner, who fixes its neck within a forked or Y-shaped stick fixed fast in the ground. With one blow the animal's head is severed from its body. The bleeding head is carried off into the shrine to be laid before the image of the goddess, and become the temple perquisite. The decapitated body is carried off by the offerer to furnish his family with a holiday meal. With his forehead ceremonially marked with a touch of the blood lying thick upon the ground, the offerer leaves ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison

... itself, while the bribes exacted by the officials who were appointed to rule the country made it impossible to obtain justice. He also waxed very indignant over the unnatural folly and wickedness of those Powers who sought to interfere with the slave trade, which he looked upon as a perquisite provided by Providence for the Arab race. Indeed the fakir showed himself to be a man of some thought and shrewdness, and some people to hear him speak might have fancied that secular interests, such ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough



Words linked to "Perquisite" :   privilege of the floor, benefit, bakshis, privilege, apanage, baksheesh, easement, pourboire, right, fringe benefit, exclusive right, tip, prerogative, backsheesh, bakshish, appanage, gratuity



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