Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Help; aid; relief; salvation; remedy in illness; boot (which see). Specifically
  • noun In old law: Compensation, as for an injury; amends; satisfaction; a payment in expiation of an offense: as, man-bote, a compensation for a man slain.
  • noun A privilege or allowance of necessaries for repair or support; estovers: as, house-bote, enough wood to repair a house or for fuel; plow-bote, cart-bote, wood for making or repairing instruments of husbandry; hay-bote or hedge-bote, wood for hedges or fences, etc.
  • noun Middle English preterit of bite.
  • A Middle English form of but.
  • noun The Japanese name of a deep-bodied shiner of the family Cyprinidœ, Acheilognathus rhombeus, found in the waters of Japan. Also known as tabira.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Compensation; amends; satisfaction; expiation.
  • noun Payment of any kind.
  • noun A privilege or allowance of necessaries.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The atonement, compensation, amends, satisfaction, expiation; as, manbote, a compensation for a man slain.
  • noun A payment of any kind
  • noun A privilege or allowance of necessaries, especially in feudal times.
  • noun law, historical A right to take wood from property not one's own.
  • noun repairs
  • noun obsolete advantage, benefit, profit, cure, remedy

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English bōte ("advantage, benefit, profit; relief, salvation; atonement, amends, expiation; cure"), from Old English bōt ("help, relief, advantage, remedy; compensation for an injury or wrong; (peace) offering, recompense, amends, atonement, reformation, penance, repentance"), from Proto-Germanic *bōtō (“recompense”).

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