Vocabulary Word
Word: usury
Definition: lending money at illegal high rates of interest
Definition: lending money at illegal high rates of interest
Sentences Containing 'usury'
Pilots bore a mortal hatred to these craft; and it was returned with usury.
This is a kind of usury, banker, that I do not understand.''
This prohibition, however, like all others of the same kind, is said to have produced no effect, and probably rather increased than diminished the evil of usury.
As the profits which can afford such an interest must eat up almost the whole rent of the landlord, so such enormous usury must in its turn eat up the greater part of those profits.
Before the fall of the Roman republic, a usury of the same kind seems to have been common in the provinces, under the ruinous administration of their proconsuls.
To borrow or to lend for such a purpose, therefore, is, in all cases, where gross usury is out of the question, contrary to the interest of both parties; and though it no doubt happens sometimes, that people do both the one and the other, yet, from the regard that all men have for their own interest, we may be assured, that it cannot happen so very frequently as we are sometimes apt to imagine.
This regulation, instead of preventing, has been found from experience to increase the evil of usury.
The debtor being obliged to pay, not only for the use of the money, but for the risk which his creditor runs by accepting a compensation for that use, he is obliged, if one may say so, to insure his creditor from the penalties of usury.
To trade, was disgraceful to a gentleman; and to lend money at interest, which at that time was considered as usury, and prohibited bylaw, would have been still more so.
More Vocab Words
::: frail - weak; N. frailty::: exceptionable - objectionable; likely to cause dislike; offensive; CF. unexceptionable: entirely acceptable
::: acquittal - deliverance from a charge; V. acquit: free from a charge or accusation; discharge from a duty; conduct (oneself) in a specified manner
::: illusive - deceiving; based on illusion; causing illusion; deceptive
::: collaborate - work together; cooperate treasonably with the enemy
::: antiquated - obsolete; old-fashioned; outdated
::: methodical - systematic; N. method: systematic method of procedure
::: admonish - warn or speak to with gentle disapproval; reprove
::: ruminant - animal that ruminates; ADJ.
::: stupor - state of being stupefied; state of apathy; daze; lack of awareness
