mortgage
Forms
- Plural
- mortgages
- present (v1)
- mortgage
- past (v2)
- mortgaged
- past participle (v3)
- mortgaged
- present participle
- mortgaging
- 3rd person singular
- mortgages
Definitions
1.A legal agreement in which a borrower pledges real property as collateral for a loan used to purchase or refinance that property.
1.To 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.
- We mortgaged our house in order to start a company.
2.To 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.
- 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.
Frequency
Overall
Uncommon· #2894
By learning goal
- Everyday conversation
- Rare
- General reading & writing
- Uncommon
- Academic
- Rare
- Literature
- Rare
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.