amortize

verb

Etymology: From Middle English amortisen, from Old French amortir (via the stem amortiss-), from Vulgar Latin *admortīre, derived from Latin mortuus (“dead”).

1. To alienate (property) in mortmain.
2. To wipe out (a debt, liability etc.) gradually or in installments.

   “extraordinary borrowing had been so extensive, Joly de Fleury reckoned, that even if it were amortized over the following decade, the state would still be running an annual deficit of over 50 million livres.”

3. To make a large cost or other quantity more manageable by dividing it into smaller parts (such as over a long time or across many transactions).

   “The magnitude of the frequency adjustment is a compromise between time accuracy, which would favor a large frequency offset so as to amortize the time error over the smallest possible interval”

4. To make a large cost or other quantity more manageable by dividing it into smaller parts (such as over a long time or across many transactions).