usury
C2CEFR level
65/100Rarity: rare
FormalRegister
General noun
The practice of lending money at unreasonably high rates of interest.
The pawnshops on the high street practised a legalised usury that trapped the poor in perpetual debt.
Business noun
The charging of interest at rates that are illegally or unconscionably high.
The payday lender's effective annual rate crossed into usury and drew a regulator's suit.
Rarity runs from 0 (a word everyone knows) to 100 (almost never seen outside specialist or literary writing). Level is the word's real difficulty on the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2.
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