mulct

noun

1. A fine or penalty, especially a pecuniary one.

   “juries cast up what a wife is worth, / By laying whate'er sum in mulct they please on / The lover, who must pay a handsome price, / Because it is a marketable vice.”

   “[…]by the Salic law, no higher mulct was imposed for killing, than for kidnapping a slave.”

   “The Act of Uniformity had laid a mulct of a hundred pounds on every person who, not having received episcopal ordination, should presume to administer the Eucharist.”

verb

1. To impose such a fine or penalty.

   “None of their numerous quarrels with Rome from 437 (?) B.C. onwards (Liv. 4. 17) led to any decisive result until their rebellion in the year 341 B.C., when the city, despite its strong position on a hill with steep sides, was taken (e.g. Polyb. 1. 65) and mulcted of half its territory.”

   “I say that I have seen the current issue of the Thursday Review, and I can quite understand him wanting to mulct the journal in substantial damages […]”

2. (transitive)To swindle (someone) out of money.

   “Mr. Train's most celebrated real life case was said to have been the prosecution in 1914 of Henry Siegel, operator of a chain of dry-goods stores, who was accused of mulcting thousands in a savings account scheme.”

   “However, the pressure on the legislature to license an occupation rarely comes from the members of the public who have been mulcted or in other ways abused by members of the occupation.”