Etymology

wergeld

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Today it means: Blood money, the monetary value assigned to a person, set according to their rank, used to determine the compensation paid by the perpetrator of a crime to the victim in the case of injury or to the victim's kindred in the case of homicide; such a reparative payment or compensation. Full definition →

Old English werġeld ← Proto-West Germanic *werageld
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The story

  1. Proto-West Germanic · derived from*werageld
  2. Old English · learned borrowing fromwerġeld
  3. English todaywergeld

Learned borrowing from Old English werġeld, wereġeld (“compensation for a man killed”), from Proto-West Germanic *werageld. More at wer, geld.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.