IMPIGNORATE/ɪmˈpɪɡnəreɪt/

To place in pawn; to pledge or mortgage.

This was chiefly a Scots term, the Oxford English Dictionary says, taken from Latin pignerare, to pledge. So it isn’t surprising to find it in Daniel Brewster’s Edinburgh Encyclopaedia of 1830: “In the year 1468, Orkney and Zetland were impignorated to James III of Scotland, as a portion of the dowry of his Danish queen”.

Known to have been impignorate ...

Another Scot, Robert Louis Stevenson, used it several times in letters, as here to a friend from Honolulu in 1889: “I have got the yacht paid off in triumph, I think; and though we stay here impignorate, it should not be for long, even if you bring us no extra help from home.”

But you will search in vain for a more recent serious use, except in the occasional crossword puzzle clue. A supposed letter from a poet to an editor who had displeased him appeared in some American newspapers during 1905: “I tell you, without supervacaneous words, nothing will render ignoscible your conduct to me. I warn you that I would vellicate your nose if I thought that any moral diarthrosis thereby could be performed — if I thought I should not impignorate my reputation.”

[Supervacaneous: superfluous, redundant; Ignoscible: pardonable; Vellicate: to irritate; Diarthrosis: articulation (usually of bones).]

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