A mortgage is a long-term loan you use to buy a house or other property, which you pay back over many years with interest. If you don’t make the payments, the lender can take the property.
From Old French *morgage* or *mort gage*, literally “dead pledge.” It was called “dead” because the pledge ended either when the debt was paid or when the property was taken. The word came into Middle English in the late Middle Ages along with legal and banking terms from French and Latin.
A mortgage is literally a “dead pledge,” which sounds like something from a fantasy novel. The idea is that the promise “dies” once the debt is fully paid or the house is lost. So every mortgage is a long, slow promise that eventually has to end one way or another.
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