A penalty, forfeit, or fine; an archaic legal term for something taken away as punishment for wrongdoing.
From Old English 'for-' (away, completely) + 'fault' (failure, error), showing how legal terminology combined directional prefixes with concepts of wrongdoing. The term was particularly common in Norman-influenced medieval law.
Medieval legal documents are full of creative 'for-' words—'forfault,' 'forfeiture,' 'forfeit'—each nuancing slightly different aspects of losing something due to crime. It shows how lawyers invented vocabulary to handle new concepts in a mixing language system.
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