Redeem

To buy back; to repurchase. Redeemable: that which one has the right to buy back. Redeemed: bought back; repurchased. Redemption: the buying back or repurchasing something which one previously owned and parted with. These words have been particularly applied to the mortgagor's paying the mortgage debt, and obtaining the mortgaged property back again, free and clear of the incumbrance. This use grew naturally out of the former views of the nature of mortgage (q. v.), by which the lands were viewed as conveyed conditionally, and absolutely afterwards, to the mortgagee; and they were very appropriately and properly descriptive of the mortgagor's right to go into equity to redeem a forfeited estate, and demand a reconveyance; for this was really a repurchase, — a buying of the lands back again. These descriptive words yet survive, and are in general use, although the ideas they once represented have become obsolete in most of the states.

Kortright v. Cady, 21 N. Y. 343, 365.

Mortgage is not generally treated at the present day as a conveyance of the fee, but is regarded as an incumbrance or security only. But the change has made no difference in the use of "redeem" and its inflections. Analogously, the words are frequently used of the transaction by which a pledgor pays his debt and takes back the pawn. To do this is to redeem the thing pledged. "Redeemable" and "redemption" were held equivalent to "payable" and "payment," when used in a contract pledging stocks for security of a debt, in Swasey v. North Carolina R. Co.