Jul 24, 2012
quit-rent, n.
1. a. A (usually small) rent paid by a freeholder or copyholder in lieu of services which might otherwise be required; a nominal rent paid (esp. in former British colonial territories to the Crown) as an acknowledgement of tenure. Now chiefly hist.
Etymology: < quit adj. + rent n.1, probably after Anglo-Norman quiterente (a1334). Compare post-classical Latin quietus redditus (frequently from 12th cent. in British sources).
Why, that muzhik alone was worth all the others put together; he used to trade in Moscow, bringing me five hundred in quitrent alone. (Gogol [Guerney], Dead Souls, p.98)