Amerciament

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A monetary penalty or fine that a court or lord imposes arbitrarily at its discretion, often for a minor offence
2. The discretionary punishment, usually a fine, levied by a court of law upon someone who has committed an offence
3. A pecuniary penalty set at the mercy of a judge or feudal lord, rather than fixed by statute for the wrongdoing

Etymology: An amerciament was a fine imposed at the mercy of the court: the offender was judged to be "in mercy" and the penalty was set by the court's discretion rather than by a fixed statute. The phrase behind it is Old French "à merci", meaning "at the mercy" or "at the discretion" of someone, which gave Anglo-Norman "amercier", to fine someone in this way. The English word came from Medieval Latin "amerciamentum", a learned Latin form built from "amerciare" with the suffix "-amentum", which marks the result of an action. English then combined the Anglo-Norman verb with the French-derived suffix "-ment", so the word carries two layers of borrowing in one form. Its core idea survives in the older sense of "amerce", which still means to punish by a fine, and the word itself is the noun for that penalty.

Synonyms: amercement, fine, penalty

Antonyms: pardon, remission, exoneration