mortgage

plural mortgages · alternative morgage

1. countableuncountablebusinessA legal agreement in which a borrower pledges real property as collateral for a loan used to purchase or refinance that property.

   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.

   1815, Walter Scott, Guy Mannering, Or, The Astrologer, Volume 1, page 19

2. countableobsoleteuncountableThe state of being pledged.

   lands given in mortgage

present singular third person mortgages · participle present mortgaging · participle past mortgaged · past mortgaged · alternative morgage

1. transitivelawTo borrow against a property, to obtain a loan for another purpose by giving away the right of seizure to the lender over a fixed property such as a house or piece of land; to pledge a property in order to get a loan.

   to mortgage a property, an estate, or a shop

   1 more example

   We mortgaged our house in order to start a company.

2. figurativelytransitiveTo pledge and make liable; to make subject to obligation; to achieve an immediate result by paying for it in the long term.

   She mortgaged her future for the pleasures of the relationship with the sculptor, a relationship she knew would be short.

   1982, Verne Moberg, The Truth and Work of Victoria Benedictsson, page 72

   1 more example

   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.

   2001, Antony Rowland, Tony Harrison and the Holocaust, page 193