mortpay

English

Etymology

French mort (“dead”) + English pay.

Noun

mortpay (plural mortpays)

1. (obsolete) The crime of taking pay for the service of dead soldiers, or for services not actually rendered by soldiers.
   • 1622, Francis, Lord Verulam, Viscount St. Alban [i.e. Francis Bacon], The Historie of the Raigne of King Henry the Seventh, […], London: […] W[illiam] Stansby for Matthew Lownes, and William Barret, →OCLC:

     the severe punishing of mortpays and keeping back soldiers' wages in captain

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “mortpay”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)