Mortgage is a loan taken to purchase property and guaranteed by the same property.
(noun)An example of a mortgage is the loan you took out when you bought your house.
To mortgage is when you take a loan and use your property as collateral.
(verb)An example of mortgage is when you go to the bank and borrow money against your house.
See mortgage in Webster's New World College Dictionary
noun
Origin: OFr morgage, mort gage, lit., dead pledge < mort, dead (see mort) + gage, gage
transitive verb mortgaged, mortgaging
See mortgage in American Heritage Dictionary 4
noun
Origin:
Origin: Middle English morgage
Origin: , from Old French
Origin: : mort, dead (from Vulgar Latin *mortus, from Latin mortuus, past participle of morī, to die; see mer- in Indo-European roots)
Origin: + gage, pledge (of Germanic origin)
. Word History: The great jurist Sir Edward Coke, who lived from 1552 to 1634, has explained why the term mortgage comes from the Old French words mort, “dead,” and gage, “pledge.” It seemed to him that it had to do with the doubtfulness of whether or not the mortgagor will pay the debt. If the mortgagor does not, then the land pledged to the mortgagee as security for the debt “is taken from him for ever, and so dead to him upon condition, &c. And if he doth pay the money, then the pledge is dead as to the [mortgagee].” This etymology, as understood by 17th-century attorneys, of the Old French term morgage, which we adopted, may well be correct. The term has been in English much longer than the 17th century, being first recorded in Middle English with the form morgage and the figurative sense “pledge” in a work written before 1393.Learn more about mortgage