mulct

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The Word of the Day for November 21 is: 

mulct   \MULKT\   verb
         1 : to punish by a fine
    2 *a : to defraud especially of money : swindle  b : to obtain by fraud, 
duress, or theft 

Example sentence:
     Francis was finally barred from the securities industry when it was 
discovered he'd been mulcting investors for years.

Did you know?
     A fine assessed as a penalty for an infraction is generally considered 
justifiable. Fraud, on the other hand, is wrong -- it's just the sort of thing 
that deserves a fine. So in "mulct" we have a unique word, one that means both 
"to fine" and "to defraud." The "fine" sense came first. "Mulct" was borrowed 
from the Latin word for a fine, which is "multa" or "mulcta." The “fine” sense 
is still in use, mostly in legal contexts ("the court mulcted the defendant for 
punitive damages"), but these days "mulct" is more often used for an illegal 
act. It has been speculated that the use may have come about by association 
with the verb "milk," in its sense "to exploit, to coerce profit from" (as in 
"she was milked by the lawyers for everything she had"), but that speculation 
has never been proven.





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