mulct

plural mulcts

1. lawA fine or penalty, especially a pecuniary one.

   […]by the Salic law, no higher mulct was imposed for killing, than for kidnapping a slave.

   1838, William H[ickling] Prescott, History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic. […], volume I, Boston, Mass.: American Stationers’ Company; John B. Russell, →OCLC, 1st part (1406–1492), page xxxvi

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   juries cast up what a wife is worth, / By laying whate'er sum in mulct they please on / The lover, who must pay a handsome price, / Because it is a marketable vice.

   1819 July 15, [Lord Byron], Don Juan, London: […] Thomas Davison, […], →OCLC, canto I, stanza LXIV

   The Act of Uniformity had laid a mulct of a hundred pounds on every person who, not having received episcopal ordination, should presume to administer the Eucharist.

   1851, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter XI, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume III, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC

present singular third person mulcts · participle present mulcting · participle past mulcted · past mulcted

1. To impose such a fine or penalty.

   I say that I have seen the current issue of the Thursday Review, and I can quite understand him wanting to mulct the journal in substantial damages […]

   1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter XVI, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC

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   None of their numerous quarrels with Rome from 437 (?) B.C. onwards (Liv. 4. 17) led to any decisive result until their rebellion in the year 341 B.C., when the city, despite its strong position on a hill with steep sides, was taken (e.g. Polyb. 1. 65) and mulcted of half its territory.

   1897, Robert Seymour Conway, The Italic Dialects, Cambridge University Press, page 370

2. transitiveTo swindle (someone) out of money.

   However, the pressure on the legislature to license an occupation rarely comes from the members of the public who have been mulcted or in other ways abused by members of the occupation.

   1962, Milton Friedman, Rose D. Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, page 140

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   Mr. Train's most celebrated real life case was said to have been the prosecution in 1914 of Henry Siegel, operator of a chain of dry-goods stores, who was accused of mulcting thousands in a savings account scheme.

   1945 December 23, “Arthur Train Dead; Created Mr. Tutt”, in The New York Times, →ISSN