amerce

If you break the law, you could find yourself "at the mercy" of the court. As you await your punishment (hoping that the judge will in fact be merciful), you may want to ponder the history of amerce. It begins with the Old French phrase a merci, meaning "at (one's) mercy," which in turn gave rise to the Anglo-French verb amercier (same meaning as amerce). Middle English speakers adopted the French word as amercien, which was later modernized to amerce. In addition to the legal use, amerce can also be used in a more general sense for the infliction of any sort of punishment, monetary or otherwise.