Word.ws English Dictionary

black rent

black rent noun: blackmail (rent paid in corn, meat, or the lowest coin).

Noun

black rent (uncountable)

  1. (dated) Blackmail (rent paid in corn, meat, or the lowest coin).
    • [F]rom whose rich domains in Meath he received a “black rent” equivalent to £10,000 a year[.]1856, “Notes on Old Irish Maps”, in Ulster Journal of Archaeology, volume 4, page 121
  2. (Ireland, historical, Scottish Borders) Protection money.
    • [N]othing could have preserved them from total extirpation but the assistance afforded them by the other Irish princes and tribes, whose friendship and protection they purchased by paying them a tribute, or black rent, as it was called.1825, Edward O’Reilly, “An Essay on the Subject Proposed by the Royal Irish Academy”, in The Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, volume 14, page 160
    • [S]he pays me the black rent, and I let her alone[.]1831, Edmond O’Foelin, “Eman Oge: A Translation from an Original Irish Story”, in The National Magazine, volume 2, number 3, page 289

Questions about black rent

What does black rent mean?
Black rent means blackmail (rent paid in corn, meat, or the lowest coin).
What part of speech is black rent?
Black rent is a noun.

Words near black rent in the dictionary

  1. black raspberry
  2. black rat
  3. black rats
  4. black redstart
  5. black redstarts
  6. black rent
  7. black rhino
  8. black rhinoceros
  9. black rhinoceroses
  10. black rhinos
  11. black rice

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: black rent (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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