Danegeld
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A tax raised originally to pay tribute or protection money to the Viking raiders in the 10th and 11th centuries to save a land from being ravaged, and later continued as a land tax. uncountable
"And who shall then stick closest to ye, and excite others? not he who takes up armes for cote and conduct, and his four nobles of Danegelt."
- 2 Alternative letter-case form of Danegeld. alt-of, uncountable
"He notes how 'the Conservatives confusedly thought that they had to pay danegeld to the Left and did so reluctantly and inappropriately, ..."
- 3 Any kind of tribute. broadly, uncountable
"The best now pay danegeld to the sloths, the greedy, the manipulators. And congress has legitimized the channels of deceit through laws which pay danegeld to the most strident noise makers."
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"And who shall then stick closest to ye, and excite others? not he who takes up armes for cote and conduct, and his four nobles of Danegelt."
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English danegeld, from Dane, genitive plural of Dan (“Dane”), plus geld (“geld, tribute, payment”). Apparently modeled on a Scandinavian word such as Old Danish Danegjeld), from Old Norse *Danagjald, from the genitive plural of Danir (“Danes”) + gjald (“payment, tribute”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.