merchet means in Middle Ages England, a fine paid to a lord on a daughter's marriage, in recompense for the loss of a worker. It carries an Arena rating of 1258, earned across 49 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, merchet ranks #704 of 17,138 for Most Incisive Words, #755 of 17,149 for Most Exacting Words, #3,236 of 17,131 for Scariest Words, #4,166 of 17,163 for Funniest Words.
Why “merchet” is a great word
MERCHET — [Noun] A fine levied by a feudal lord upon a peasant for the right of his daughter to marry, compensating the manorial estate for the loss of her labor. From the Welsh plural merched, from merch ("daughter, girl"). Unlike a "dowry" (a voluntary transfer of wealth to the groom's family) or a "heriot" (a death duty extracted from a tenant's estate), merchet was a compulsory toll on a father's future, a feudal tax on hope itself. It was the coarse weight of coin counted out in a dim hall, the lord's steward noting the transaction in a ledger, and the daughter's value measured in the bushels of barley she would no longer reap—a stark calculus where the passage from maiden to wife was a ledger entry, and affection a taxable event.
Etymology
From Welsh merched, plural form of merch (“daughter”).
noun
- In Middle Ages England, a fine paid to a lord on a daughter's marriage, in recompense for the loss of a worker.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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