Blackmails

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The practice of forcing someone to act against their will by threatening to disclose compromising information
2. Coercing an individual to comply with demands by blackening their reputation through threats of exposure
3. The act of manipulating an individual into compliance by threatening to reveal damaging secrets or information

Etymology: The verb "blackmails" is simply the third-person singular of a word that began as a payment, not a threat. In the Scottish Borders, from the Middle Ages, farmers paid local raiders tribute in goods or labour to be spared attack. Latin records call this "reditus nigri," or "black mail," set against "white rent," the payment made in silver. The "mail" half comes from an old word for a payment or rent, ultimately tied to Old English "māl," meaning agreement or bargaining, so the original sense was an agreed price for protection. The "black" is generally explained as referring to the evil of the practice, a sense of wrongdoing rather than colour. The word then broadened. By around 1826 it had come to mean any kind of extortion money, and the idea of threatening to expose secrets followed from that wider sense of coerced payment.

Synonyms: extorts, coerces