A mortgage is a loan secured against property, where the lender holds a legal claim on that property until the borrower repays the debt. There’s a darker story behind this word.
“Mortgage” comes from the Old French mort gage, meaning “dead pledge.” Mort derives from the Latin mortuus, meaning dead, while gage means pledge or security.
Medieval jurist Sir Edward Coke explained the logic: the pledge becomes “dead” in one of two ways — either the borrower repays the debt and the obligation expires, or the borrower defaults and forfeits the property entirely.
Either way, the deal dies. The name stuck.
