841: blackmail Mar 28, 2017

In TV, books, or perhaps even real life there is more than enough blackmailing, this does not involve any dark-colored postage at all. Although it is a single word, as you might expect, this is certainly a compound of what is now 'black' and 'mail', this does not mean that the second element in this is related at all to the post. Instead, this comes from the Middle English, 'male' which comes from the Old English 'mal' meaning '(legal) agreement', and also only coincidentally is spelt the same as the sex. In some places, 'male' became synonymous for 'rent' which was often paid in silver, leading to the phrase 'white money' and 'whitemail'. Some people were forced to pay extra fees to landlords as a sort of "protection money", and this then became termed 'blackmail' in parts of England and Scottland. There is some debate as to where the 'black' comes from, but the two main theories are that it is either just opposite to 'white' with some negative connotations, but also the Scott's Gaelic word, 'blathaich' meaning 'protection' could have led to the identical spelling and pronunciation as the color.