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bribe: bribe: [14] The origin of bribe is obscure, and its semantic history is particularly involved. The word first turns up in Old French, as a noun meaning ‘piece of bread, especially one given to a beggar’. From this, the progression of senses seems to have been to a more general ‘alms’; then to the ‘practice of living on alms’; then, pejoratively, to simple ‘begging’. From there it was a short step to ‘stealing’, and that was the meaning the verb had when first recorded in English.

The shift to the current application to financial corruption occurred in the 16th century, originally, it seems, in the context of judges and others in authority who exacted, or ‘stole’, money in exchange for favours such as lenient sentences.
exact (v.): mid-15c., from Latin exactus, past participle of exigere "require, enforce, demand, collect (money);" see exact (adj.). Older in English than the adjective and retaining the literal sense of the Latin source. Related: Exacted; exacting.
fee (n.): Middle English, representing the merger or mutual influence of two words, one from Old English, one from an Old French form of the same Germanic word, and both ultimately from a PIE root meaning "cattle."

The Old English word is feoh "livestock, cattle; movable property; possessions in livestock, goods, or money; riches, treasure, wealth; money as a medium of exchange or payment," from Proto-Germanic *fehu- (cognates: Old Saxon fehu, Old High German fihu, German Vieh "cattle," Gothic faihu "money, fortune"). This is from PIE *peku- "cattle" (cognates: Sanskrit pasu, Lithuanian pekus "cattle;" Latin pecu "cattle," pecunia "money, property").

The other word is Anglo-French fee, from Old French fieu, a variant of fief "possession, holding, domain; feudal duties, payment" (see fief), which apparently is a Germanic compound in which the first element is cognate with Old English feoh.

Via Anglo-French come the legal senses "estate in land or tenements held on condition of feudal homage; land, property, possession" (c. 1300). Hence fee-simple (late 14c.) "absolute ownership," as opposed to fee-tail (early 15c.) "entailed ownership," inheritance limited to some particular class of heirs (second element from Old French taillir "to cut, to limit").

The feudal sense was extended from landholdings to inheritable offices of service to a feudal lord (late 14c.; in Anglo-French late 13c.), for example forester of fe "a forester by heritable right." As these often were offices of profit, the word came to be used for "remuneration for service in office" (late 14c.), hence, "payment for (any kind of) work or services" (late 14c.). From late 14c. as "a sum paid for a privilege" (originally admission to a guild); early 15c. as "money payment or charge exacted for a license, etc."
finance (n.): c. 1400, "an end, settlement, retribution," from Old French finance "end, ending; pardon, remission; payment, expense; settlement of a debt" (13c.), noun of action from finer "to end, settle a dispute or debt," from fin (see fine (n.)). Compare Medieval Latin finis "a payment in settlement, fine or tax."

The notion is of "ending" (by satisfying) something that is due (compare Greek telos "end;" plural tele "services due, dues exacted by the state, financial means"). The French senses gradually were brought into English: "ransom" (mid-15c.), "taxation" (late 15c.); the sense of "management of money, science of monetary business" first recorded in English 1770.
toll (n.): "tax, fee," Old English toll "impost, tribute, passage-money, rent," variant of toln, cognate with Old Norse tollr, Old Frisian tolen, Old High German zol, German Zoll, probably representing an early Germanic borrowing from Late Latin tolonium "custom house," from Latin telonium "tollhouse," from Greek teloneion "tollhouse," from telones "tax-collector," from telos "tax" (see tele-; for sense, compare finance). On the other theory it is native Germanic and related to tell (v.) on the notion of "that which is counted." Originally in a general sense of "payment exacted by an authority;" meaning "charge for right of passage along a road" is from late 15c.