manbote

English

Alternative forms

• manbot

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Old English manbōt (“fine paid to the lord of a slain man or vassal”), equivalent of man +‎ bote.

Noun

manbote (plural manbotes or manboten)

1. (law, historical, Anglo-Saxon) A sum paid to a lord as a pecuniary compensation for killing his vassal, servant, or tenant.

   Three weeks later an equal sum, under the name of manbote, was paid to the lord, as a compensation for the loss of his vassal. — John Lingard, A History of England, 1688.

   If a man was slain a special manbot, or compensation for the loss of a man, had to be paid to the lord side by side with the mægbot to the kin. — NYT, Daily Lexeme: Maegbot, 2011 - (quoting H.R. Loyns, 1962)

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Spelman to this entry?) >

References

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “manbote”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

Anagrams

• boatmen