A house with a “For Sale” sign posted in front of it
24 May 2021
A reader wrote me asking about mortgage. It seems she was conversing with someone from Holland and upon telling him that her husband was a mortgage broker, the Dutchman assumed he was a mortician. She wanted to know where the word mortgage came from and if it was etymologically related to mortician and mortuary. The short answer is that it is.
A mortgage is a debt secured with lien on property; in present-day use the word is usually applied to real estate transactions. It is a compound found in Anglo-Norman, from mort (dead) + gage (pledge). The French word is modeled after the medieval Latin phrase mortuum vadium, which also means dead pledge. Dead would seem to be a strange term to apply to a loan, but it is “dead” for two reasons: the property is forfeit or dead to the borrower if the loan is not repaid, and the pledge itself is dead if the loan is repaid.
The Anglo-Norman word is recorded in a legal document from 1293, during the reign of Edward I:
Un Adam bayla a B. une tere en morgage pur un soume de deners.
(One Adam delivered to B. a piece of land in mortgage for a sum of money.)
In English, the earliest extant use of mortgage is in a figurative sense, referring to a marriage vow. John Gower’s Confessio Amantis (The Lover’s Confession), written sometime before 1393, includes this passage:
Forthi scholde every good man knowe
And thenke, hou that in mariage
His trouthe plight lith in morgage,
Which if he breke, it is falshode,
And that descordeth to manhode,
And namely toward the grete,
Wherof the bokes alle trete.(Therefore, every good man should know
And think, how that in marriage
His sworn vow lies in mortgage,
Which if he breaks, it is a falsehood,
And that is at odds with manhood,
And namely toward the sorrow,
Of which the books all discuss.)
The legal sense of the word may have been in English use prior to this, but perhaps not. In the fourteenth century, most English legal documents would have been written in Anglo-Norman, or perhaps Latin, and Gower, who wrote poetry in Latin, French, and English, may have been the first to take this word across the linguistic boundary between the languages. In any case, the legal sense in English is recorded from c.1400, shortly after Gower wrote that poem.
The English legal sense appears in the Book of Vices and Virtues, written c.1400, in a section about the evils of usury:
Suche folke doþ moche harm, for bi cause of terme of payment þat þei ȝyueþ, þei destroieþ þe peple, and namely pore knyȝtes and squyers, and also grete lordes þat ben ȝong and gon to iustynge & turnemens, and ouuer pe grete see and in-to Prus; for þei taken hem ofte here londes and rentes and grete heritages in wedde and in dede wedde, as morgage, and bi lettres of sale, þat ben lost for euere-more, for þei mowe not quyte hem at þe terme.
(Such folk do much harm, because of the terms of payment that they give; they destroy the people, namely poor knights and squires, and also great lords who are young and to joustings and tournaments over the great sea and into Prussia, for they often take from them their lands and rents and great heritages in surety and in dead surety, as in a mortgage, and by letters of sale that are lost for evermore, for they cannot pay them at the term.)
The monk and poet John Lydgate uses the term c. 1435 in a poetic letter to the Duke of Gloucester. The letter is a complaint to the purse, a common medieval genre of poetry in which the poet begs money from a wealthy patron. Unlike Gower, in this poem Lydgate is using the word in the legal sense:
Harde to likke hony out of a marbil stoon,
For ther is nouthir licour nor moisture;
An ernest grote, whan it is dronke and goon,
Bargeyn of marchauntys, stant in aventure;
My purs and I be callyd to the lure
Off indigence, our stuff leyd in morgage.
But ye, my Lord, may al our soor recure,
With a receyt of plate and of coignage.(It is hard to lick honey out of a marble stone,
For there is neither liquor nor moisture;
An earnest coin, when it is drunk and gone,
A merchant’s deal, is lost;
My purse and I are called to the lure
Of indigence, our possessions laid in mortgage,
But you my lord, may heal all our sores,
With a sum of plate and coinage.)
The < t > starts being added, morgage becoming mortgage, in the mid sixteenth century in imitation of the Latin. It was common in the Early Modern period to alter the spelling of words to better match the Latin roots.
Sources:
Anglo-Norman Dictionary, 2012, s.v. morgage.
Francis, W. Nelson, ed. Book of Vices and Virtues. Early English Text Society O.S. 217. London: Humphrey Milford, 1942, 31–32. HathiTrust Digital Archive. San Marino, Huntington Library, MS HM 147.
Gower, John. Confessio Amantis, vol. 3 of 3. Russell A. Peck, ed. Andrew Galloway, trans. 7.4226–32. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Fairfax 3.
Horwood, Alfred J., ed. Year Books of the Reign of King Edward the First. Years 21 and 22. London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyker, 1866, 17. HathiTrust Digital Archive. Cambridge, University Library, MS Dd.7.14.
Lydgate, John. “Lydgate’s Letter to Gloucester.” The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, vol. 2 of 2. Henry N. MacCracken, ed. Early English Text Society O.S. 192. London: Humphrey Milford, 1934, 666. HathiTrust Digital Archive. London, British Library, MS Harley 2255.
Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. morgage, n.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2021, s.v. mortage, n.; December 2020, s.v. mortgage, v.
Photo credit: Philippe Giabbanelli, 2009. licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.