Meaning

noun a conditional conveyance of property as security for the repayment of a loan

verb put up as security or collateral

originFrom Middle English morgage and Middle French mortgage, from Anglo-Norman morgage, from Old French mort gage (“dead pledge”), after a translation of judicial Medieval Latin mortuum wadium, with wadium from Frankish *wadi (“wager, pledge”). Compare gage and also wage. So called because rents and profits from the land were owed to the lender for as long as the gage existed (comparable to interest…

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0