Amortise

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To decrease the balance of a debt by making scheduled payments that encompass both principal and interest over a specified time frame
2. To systematically decrease a liability through regular contributions that address both the principal owed and accrued interest
3. To gradually reduce the total amount owed on a debt through consistent payments that include both principal and interest over an agreed period

Etymology: The root of "amortise" is an image of death. Its ancestor is the Latin "mortuus", meaning "dead", and in Old French "amortir" grew from a Vulgar Latin form "admortīre", a verb built on that same stem. The sense "to deaden" or "to put to death" was literal in the early French, and the word was a kind of killing: to kill off, or to make something lifeless. English borrowed the word in the Middle Ages as "amortisen", and its meanings shifted. The notion of deadening gave way to the idea of wearing something away or settling it, and in legal and financial use it came to describe transferring property into the hands of an institution that would never let it go, which is how the sense of "dead hand" entered the picture. Over time the word narrowed into its modern financial meaning: paying off a debt steadily, in instalments, until nothing is left of it.

Synonyms: repay, liquidate, extinguish

Antonyms: incur, accumulate