rack-rent
Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition
- noun Exorbitant rent.
- transitive verb To exact exorbitant rent for or from.
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- noun A rent raised to the highest possible limit; a rent greater than any tenant can reasonably be expected to pay: used especially of land-rents in Ireland.
- verb To subject to the payment of rack-rent.
- verb To impose rack-rents.
Examples
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Many small farms were indeed still let to some cottagers at rack-rent, which cottages had the right of commonage, guaranteed to them in their leases; but afterwards the commons were enclosed, and no recompense was made to the tenants by the landlords.
The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. From George III. to Victoria
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Those who carry snuff-boxes are only his tenants; and hold them merely by virtue of a _rack-rent_, under him.
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The result of such rack-rent can only be evil, -- abuse and neglect of the soil, deterioration in the character of the laborers, and a widespread sense of injustice.
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Men who cheat in trade, who scamp work, evade taxes, rack-rent the poor, are no better than pirates and wreckers.
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The father had advanced into more than middle age; and having held, at a rack-rent the miserable waste of farm which he occupied, he was compelled to exert himself in its cultivation, despite either obduracy of soil, or inclemency of weather.
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If we had to describe a man who is retrogressive in the most evil sense of the word -- we should say, he is one who would dub himself a reformer of our constitution, while every interest for which he is immediately responsible is going to decay: a philanthropist who cannot bear one rogue to be hanged, but does not mind five honest tenants being half-starved: a man who shrieks at corruption, and keeps his farms at rack-rent: who roars himself red at rotten boroughs, and does not mind if every field on his farms has a rotten gate: a man very open-hearted to Leeds and Manchester, no doubt; he would give any number of representatives who will pay for their seats out of their own pockets: what he objects to giving, is a little return on rent-days to help a tenant to buy stock, or an outlay on repairs to keep the weather out at a tenant's barn-door or make his house look a little less like an Irish cottier's.
Note
The 'rack' of 'rack-rent' may have the sense of 'stretch, increase'.
