Word.ws English Dictionary

spear penny

spear penny noun: a fine under medieval Welsh law levied on related male landowners when the immediate kin of a murderer proved incapable of paying galanas.

Noun

spear penny

  1. (historical) A fine under medieval Welsh law levied on related male landowners when the immediate kin of a murderer proved incapable of paying galanas

Origin of spear penny

From spear + penny, a calque translation of the Welsh ceiniog baladr, from ceiniog (“penny”) + paladr (“shaft"; "spear”).

Questions about spear penny

What does spear penny mean?
Spear penny means a fine under medieval Welsh law levied on related male landowners when the immediate kin of a murderer proved incapable of paying galanas.
What part of speech is spear penny?
Spear penny is a noun.

Words near spear penny in the dictionary

  1. spear grasses
  2. spear gun
  3. spear guns
  4. spear lilies
  5. spear lily
  6. spear penny
  7. spear phishing
  8. spear side
  9. spear sides
  10. spear tackle
  11. spear tackles

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: spear penny (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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