Credit and interest

Der Wucher is the word German law uses for lending at an exploitative price, and a contract found to be Wucher is void. The word did not start out as an accusation. In Old High German wuohhar meant growth and yield: the produce of a field, the young of a herd, the gain on money lent. Gothic, the oldest Germanic language to survive in a long text, uses its form of the word, wōkrs, for ordinary interest. The meaning darkened when the medieval Church condemned taking interest at all, so that every lender was a Wucherer; once interest was accepted again, the word kept only the excess. The old sense of growth survives in the verb wuchern, which is what weeds do in an untended garden. Everything else on this list is the lawful side of the same trade: der Sollzins, die Tilgung, die Grundschuld.