wergeld

English

Alternative forms

• wehrgeld, weregeld, weregild, were gild, wergelt, wergild

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Old English werġeld, wereġeld (“compensation for a man killed”), from Proto-West Germanic *werageld. More at wer, geld.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈwɛəɡɛld/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈweɹɡɛld/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

Noun

wergeld (countable and uncountable, plural wergelds)

1. (historical, especially in Germanic law) Blood money, the monetary value assigned to a person, set according to their rank, used to determine the compensation paid by the perpetrator of a crime to the victim in the case of injury or to the victim's kindred in the case of homicide; such a reparative payment or compensation.

   Synonym: (obsolete) wer

   Coordinate term: bloodwite

   • 1862, John Benjamin Marsden, The Influence of the Mosaic Code Upon Subsequent Legislation, →ISBN:

     The first law we find is one of Æthelbirht's:—"if a freeman lie with a freeman's wife, let him pay for it with his 'wer-geld,' and provide another wife with his own money, and bring her to the other."

   • 1902, Frederic Seebohm, Tribal Custom in Anglo-Saxon Law, Longmans, Green and Co., page 272:

     If, then, at the time of the laws we look at the class of landowners who were prominent as odalmen or haulds—typical men with wergelds originally of 100 cows—they were not only men of full kindred whose full pedigree of freedom went back the necessary nine generations, but their grandfather’s grandfather must have possessed the land.

   • 1973, George Vernadsky, Kievan Russia, →ISBN:

     In its opening article the equality of the wergeld of a Novgorodian Slav with that of a Kievan Russian is proclaimed.

   • a. 1974 (date written), J[ohn] R[onald] R[euel] Tolkien, “Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age: In which These Tales Come to Their End”, in Christopher Tolkien, editor, The Silmarillion, 1st American edition, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Company, published 15 September 1977, →ISBN, page 295:

     But Isildur refused this counsel, saying: ‘This I will have as weregild for my father’s death, and my brother’s. Was it not I that dealt the Enemy his death-blow?’

   • 1995, David Anthony Edgell Pelteret, Slavery in Early Mediaeval England: From the Reign of Alfred Until the Twelfth Century, →ISBN:

     In these clauses a lord had the duty of yielding up his esne if he was guilty of homicide and paying the dead man's wergeld. If the esne escaped, his lord had then to pay the value of a further man (that is, one hundred shillings), which was a ceorl's wergeld and may well have been the value of an esne as well.

   • 2002, Richard Firth Green, A Crisis of Truth: Literature and Law in Ricardian England, →ISBN:

     The folklaw set a price on every person's head and this price was easily converted into oath equivalents: if the wergeld to be paid for killing a churl was 200 shillings, for killing a thegn 1200 shillings, and for killing a king 7,200 shillings, then it follows that for a churl to sue a thegn he would need five other 200-shilling men prepared to swear alongside him, and to sue a king, thirty-five others.

   • 2005, Jean A. Stuntz, Hers, His, and Theirs: Community Property Law in Spain and Early Texas, →ISBN:

     A person's class could be determined by the amount of his or her wergeld. When a malefactor killed an innocent person, the offender had to pay a fine called a wergeld. This compensation was paid to the victim's kin. The higher a person's status was, the higher his or her wergeld was. A ceorl's wergeld was usually set at two hundred shillings. A thegn's wergeld might be 1,200 shillings...The king's wergeld was also set so high that no one would contemplate killing him, because to do so would bankrupt the malefactor's family and they would all be sold into slavery to pay the debt.

Translations

Translations

• Arabic: دِيَة f (diya)
• Bulgarian: кръ́внина f (krǎ́vnina)
• Comorian:

  Ngazidja Comorian: diya class 9

• Danish: mandebod c
• Dutch: weergeld (nl) n, bloedprijs m, bloedgeld (nl) n
• Finnish: sukusakko (monetary value), veriraha (fi) (reparative payment)
• French: prix du sang (fr) m, wergeld (fr), weregild (fr), wergild (fr)

  Old French: were m or f

• Frisian:

  West Frisian: manneboet m or f

• German: Wergeld (de) n, Manngeld n, Blutgeld (de) n
• Greek: ποινή (el) f (poiní)

  Ancient Greek: ποινή f (poinḗ)

• Hungarian: vérdíj (hu), vérpénz
• Irish: airgead fola m
• Italian: guidrigildo
• Latin: weregildum n (medieval)
• Macedonian: крвнина f (krvnina)
• Persian: خونبها (fa) (xunbahâ)
• Polish: główszczyzna (pl) f
• Russian: ви́ра (ru) f (víra), ве́ргельд (ru) m (vérgelʹd)
• Serbo-Croatian:

  Cyrillic: крва̀рина f, крвнѝна f, вражда f

  Latin: krvàrina (sh) f, krvnìna (sh) f vražda f

• Spanish: precio de la sangre m, wergild
• Swahili: diya class 9
• Swedish: mansbot c
• Tigrinya: ጋር (ti) (gar)
• Ukrainian: ви́ра f (výra)
• Welsh: galanas f (for homicide), sarhad (cy) (for injury)

See also

• blood money
• Lex Frisionum

References

• “wergeld” in Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary: Based on Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, 7th edition, Springfield, Mass.: G[eorge] & C[harles] Merriam, 1963 (1967 printing), →OCLC.

French

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /vɛʁ.ɡɛld/

• Audio (France (Vosges)):

  (file)

Noun

wergeld m (plural wergelds)

1. (historical) wergeld

Further reading

• “wergeld”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012

Old English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈwerˌjeld/, [ˈwerˌjeɫd]

Noun

werġeld n

1. alternative form of werġield

Declension

Strong a-stem:

	singular	plural
nominative	werġeld	werġeld
accusative	werġeld	werġeld
genitive	werġeldes	werġelda
dative	werġelde	werġeldum