• IPA: /mʌlkt/

mulct (plural mulcts)

1. (legal) A fine or penalty, especially a pecuniary one.
   • 1819, Lord Byron, Don Juan, I:

     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.

   • 1846, Thomas Babington Macauley, The History of England from the Accession of James II, Volume 3 ↗, Porter & Coates, Chapter XI:

     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.

   • 1846, William H. Prescott, History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic, 10th ed., Volume I, page xxxvi, note

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

mulct (mulcts, present participle mulcting; past and past participle mulcted)

1. To impose such a fine or penalty.
   • 1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter XVI, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, OCLC 1227855 ↗:

     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. To swindle (someone) out of money.

• French: mulcter, verbaliser
• Portuguese: multar
• Russian: штрафова́ть
• Spanish: multar