mortgage

Etymology

From Old French 'mortgage,' a compound of 'mort' (dead, from Latin 'mortuus,' past participle of 'mori,' to die, from PIE *mer-, to die) and 'gage' (pledge, of Germanic origin, from Frankish *waddi, cognate with Old English 'wed,' pledge). The legal metaphor is that the pledge 'dies' — either when the debt is paid and the obligation ends, or when the debtor fails to pay and forfeits the property. The name was explained this way by the jurist Sir Edward Coke in the seventeenth century. Key roots: *mer- (Proto-Indo-European: "to die, to harm, to rub away").

Mortgage traces back to Proto-Indo-European *mer-, meaning "to die, to harm, to rub away". Across languages it shares form or sense with English (from Latin mortalis) mortal, English (from PIE *mer- via Germanic) murder, French (death) mort and English mortuary among others, evidence of a shared etymological family.