Payments or rewards given to someone to make up for a loss, injury, or unfair treatment they've experienced.
From Latin 'compensare' meaning 'to weigh together' or 'to balance,' combining 'com-' (together) and 'pensare' (to weigh). The meaning evolved from the literal idea of balancing scales to the modern sense of offsetting harm with payment.
The word literally means 'weighing together'—like balancing one side of a scale against the other. This metaphor stuck around for centuries because justice systems actually needed to figure out how much money would 'balance out' someone's suffering, making the word a beautiful reminder of how language captures legal thinking.
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