ENGLISH
REFERENCE

mortgage

n. · v.
US //ˈmɔɹɡədʒ// UK //mˈɔːɡɪdʒ// mort·gage
  1. 1 home loan (n.)
    B2 Upper Intermediate Law

    a long-term loan from a bank used to buy a house or land.

    a legal agreement by which a bank or similar organisation lends money at interest in exchange for taking title of the debtor's property.

    Example

    They took out a thirty-year mortgage to buy their first apartment in the city.

    Example

    The couple spent months comparing interest rates before committing to a fixed-rate mortgage that offered long-term financial stability.
  2. 2 to pledge property (v.)
    B2 Upper Intermediate Law

    to use your house as a guarantee to borrow money from a bank.

    to convey a property to a creditor as security for a loan. Transitive — requires a direct object representing the asset being pledged.

    Example

    He had to mortgage his house to get the money to start his new business.

    Example

    The entrepreneur decided to mortgage the family estate to secure the necessary capital for her ambitious tech startup.
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  1. 3 to risk the future (v.)
    C1 Advanced Literary

    to give up something important in the future to get what you want right now.

    to compromise or risk a future asset or state for the sake of an immediate advantage. Often used in political or environmental contexts.

    Example

    The government was accused of mortgaging the country's future for a short-term economic boost.

    Example

    Critics argued that the administration was mortgaging the health of future generations by ignoring urgent environmental regulations in favour of industrial growth.
Origin

From Middle English morgage and Middle French mortgage, from Anglo-Norman morgage, from Old French mort gage (“dead pledge”), after a translation of judicial Medieval Latin mortuum wadium, with wadium from Frankish *wadi (“wager, pledge”). Compare gage and also wage. So called because rents and profits from the land were owed to the lender for as long as the gage existed (comparable to interest on a loan today), as opposed to the living gage, in which rents and profits automatically reduced the debt (paying it off over time).

Idioms1 entry

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