Borgh

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An archaic term for a pledge or guarantee given to secure another person's promise ; a historical Scottish variant spelling for a walled town or chartered borough
2. Old-fashioned word for a security or bond offered to vouch for someone ; an obsolete northern spelling for a fortified town with its own rights
3. A bygone word meaning a surety that someone gives for another's obligation ; a Scots form of the word for a town that held a royal charter

Etymology: "Borgh" is an Old English word meaning a pledge or surety, a person or thing that stands as security for another's obligation. It survives in modern English mainly in the phrase "borough" for "pledge", and in the older legal sense of "borrow," which once meant to give a guarantee for someone else's debt. Its descendant is the verb "borrow," which originally meant to act as a guarantor and only later came to mean taking something on loan. The noun has a close relative in "borh," the form found in Middle English legal texts, where a "borh" was a sworn guarantor for good behaviour. Old English "borh" is linked to a Germanic root meaning "to protect" or "to pledge," and it shares that root with German "Bürge," still meaning guarantor today.