greenmail
noun
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Greenmail is a recent English coinage, but its history spans a millennium. In the Anglo-Saxon historical records for 1086, we find an early use of a word that still survives in Scottish English as mail, meaning "payment" or "rent." The 16th century saw the appearance of the compound blackmail, which was originally a tribute that freebooting chiefs at the Scottish border exacted in exchange for immunity from pillage. In 1862, the U.S. government began printing paper money using green ink, and soon the word green came to suggest money. Finally, in the 1980s, greenmail was coined by combining green and blackmail to describe a particular type of financial piracy.
Examples of greenmail in a Sentence
Robert Zafft, Forbes, 15 Apr. 2022
That comes out to an obscene $225,000 per job for factory work, proving that neither party, and few states, can control the scourge of corporate greenmail.
—Dan Haar, courant.com, 7 Aug. 2017
Dictionary Entries Near greenmail
Cite this Entry
“Greenmail.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/greenmail. Accessed 1 Dec. 2024.
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greenmail
noun
green (money) + -mail (as in blackmail)
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