"They'll follow me. I'll promise you a camel-train of gold from the palace. Khauran will be willing to pay that as guerdon for getting rid of Constantius."
-A Witch Shall be Born
guer·don.
[ˈɡərdn]
NOUN
guerdons (plural noun)
1. a reward or recompense.
VERB
guerdons (third person present) · guerdoned (past tense) · guerdoned (past participle) · guerdoning (present participle)
1. give a reward to (someone):
"there might come a time in which he should guerdon them"
ORIGIN
late Middle English: from Old French, from medieval Latin widerdonum, alteration (by association with Latin donum ‘gift’) of a West Germanic compound represented by Old High German widarlōn ‘repayment.’
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James,
my native German still uses a prefix "wider" (pronounced like 'weeder') with some nouns and verbs, with the meaning of "counter," "against," or "reciprocal."
It struck me that this might also explain the "wider" part in "widerdonum," which apparently doesn't go back to anything Latin. So the whole originally might have meant something like "countergift."
Thank you, Herzog.
Countergift makes quite a bit of sense.