| Webster's Online Dictionary |
| Expressions | Domain | Definition | |
| Black mail | Law | BLACK MAIL. When rents were reserved payable in work, grain, and the like, they were called reditus nigri, or black mail, to distinguish them from white rents or blanch farms, or such as were paid in money. Vide Alba firma. (references) | |
| Black mail | Literature | 1: For, from the depredations of freebooters, etc. 2: Money given to free-booters by way of exempting property from depredation. (Anglo-Saxon, mal, "rent-tax;" French, maille, an old coin worth.083 farthing). Grass mail was rent paid for pasturage. Mails and duties (Scotch) are rents of an estate in money or otherwise. "Black" in this phrase does not mean wicked or wrongful, but is the Gaelic, to cherish or protect. Black mail was a rent paid to Free Companies for protecting the property paid 3: To levy black mail now means to exact exorbitant charges; thus the cabs and omnibuses during the Great Exhibition years "levied black mail" on the public. Source: Brewer's Dictionary. | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | Top | ||
