mortgage
/ˈmoːɡɪd͡ʒ/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.39 in modern English
12
Scrabble Score
8
Letters
2
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A legal agreement in which a borrower pledges real property as collateral for a loan used to purchase or refinance that property.
Countable; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "The appriser, therefore, (as the holder of a mortgage was then called,) entered upon possession, and in the language of Hotspur, "came me cranking in," and cut the family out of another monstrous cantle of their remaining property."
- "lands given in mortgage"
- "to mortgage a property, an estate, or a shop"
- "We mortgaged our house in order to start a company."
- "She mortgaged her future for the pleasures of the relationship with the sculptor, a relationship she knew would be short."
- "Like a latter-day Faustus who has mortgaged his soul to the pursuit of his art, Harrison now desperately craves the paternal love from which his learning has estranged him."
Etymology
From Middle English morgage and Middle French mortgage, from Anglo-Norman morgage, from Old French mort gage (“dead pledge”), after a translation of judicial Medieval Latin mortuum wadium, with wadium from Frankish *wadi (“wager, pledge”). Compare gage and also wage. So called because rents and profits from the land were owed to the lender for as long as the gage existed (comparable to interest on a loan today), as opposed to the living gage, in which rents and profits automatically reduced the debt (paying it off over time).
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈmoːɡɪd͡ʒ/
- British English: /ˈmɔːɡɪd͡ʒ/