In Roman law, to release a debtor from obligation through an imaginary contract, even without actual payment.
From Latin 'acceptilatio,' a technical legal term combining 'accept' + '-ilate' (diminutive suffix). This was a specific Roman legal procedure.
The Romans invented 'acceptilatio' as a workaround—it let creditors forgive debts through formal agreement, showing that law has always been about agreed-upon fictions, not just real transactions.
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