Meaning

originLearned borrowing from Middle English bōte (“advantage, benefit, profit; relief, salvation; atonement, amends, expiation; cure”), from Old English bōt (“help, relief, advantage, remedy; compensation for an injury or wrong; (peace) offering, recompense, amends, atonement, reformation, penance, repentance”), from Proto-West Germanic *bōtu, from Proto-Germanic *bōtō (“recompense”). Doublet of boot…

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0