Why does "damages" mean "the sum of money claimed or adjudged to be paid in compensation for loss or injury sustained"?

Question

Why did English lawyers pick "damages"? Why not recompense, reparation, requital, or even Latinate terms like "expiation" or "solatium"? These are clearer because you won't mix these up with "damage." "Damages" is confusing because it's already the plural of "damage." I trust it's glaring why "damages" is confusing and unintuitive.

It's unintuitive because many English judges write claiming/seeking/recovering damages, which sounds like you're claiming/seeking/recovering harms and injuries! I know that legal damages are related to damage, but they're not the same. It feels more intuitive to say "claiming/seeking/recovering + recompense, reparation, requital."

The Grammarphobia Blog: On 'damage' and 'damages'

Centuries ago, however, both “damage” and “damages” were used to mean a loss as well as compensation for such a loss. Here’s an example in the Oxford English Dictionary for the plural used in the sense of loss or injury: “Repairing the damages which the kingdom had sustained by war” (The History of England, 1771, by Oliver Goldsmith).

damage (n.) | Origin and meaning of damage by Online Etymology Dictionary

c. 1300, "harm, injury; hurt or loss to person, character, or estate," from Old French damage, domage  "loss caused by injury" (12c., Modern French dommage), from dam "damage," from Latin damnum "loss, hurt, damage" (see damn). In law (as damages) "the value in money of what was lost or withheld, that which is given to repair a cost," from c. 1400. Colloquial sense of "cost, expense" is by 1755.

OED

4. Law. (Now always in plural) The value, estimated in money, of something lost or withheld; the sum of money claimed or adjudged to be paid in compensation for loss or injury sustained.

Answer 1

The legal usage is a specific, jargon-determined version of damage that has an etymon in Latin.

The semantic connection between damage as loss and damage as compensation for damage goes back to both French and Latin, languages that early English lawyers would have known well. For instance, English only became the official language of English law in 1650; before that, much of English law was also dependent on older laws and rulings written in Latin or French, languages that were used because they were thought to be more precise and authoritative on legal matters (Dale Barleben, "Legal Language, Early Modern English and Their Relationships").

This was true even in Latin, where according to Lewis and Short the etymon damnum could mean harm or loss

I.hurt, harm, damage, injury, loss

as well as legal penalty:

II. Esp. in law.

A. A fine, mulct, penalty [...] 1. damnum injuria (datum), i. e. an injury done to another's beast or slave, for which the lex Aquilia provided compensation,

The lex Aquilia was a 3rd century BCE Roman law that granted payment for injury or loss to property caused by someone else (Wikipedia). This law provided the basis for attempting to quantify the damnum (the damage to property) in a legal proceeding in order to calculate the damnum injuria datum (the damages to be given).

The legal story of how the lex Aquilia influences French law and English common law is complicated (see e.g. "How the Romans Did for Us: Ancient Roots of the Tort of Negligence"), but in summary, the foundational legal terms were taken up successively in French courts and then in English ones. The legal damnum became damages in English law (via the French damage), while the more general meaning of damage also came into English. For instance, Geoffrey Chaucer and John Lydgate, two Middle English authors who would have been familiar with French, Latin, and Chancery English, serve as early examples of the use of damages in the OED:

c1374 G. Chaucer tr. Boethius De Consol. Philos. i. v. 25 Þou hast wepen for þe damage [1560 dommage] of þi renoune þat is appaired.

1430 J. Lydgate tr. Hist. Troy i. vi He was enoynted with an oyntment On his body that kept him from damage.

That entanglement of general and legal use continued into the early modern period and beyond. Early lexicographers parsed the two meanings in ways that explained the legal sense as an extension of the general one. For example, John Cowell, in The Interpreter: or Book Containing the Signification of Words (1607) attempts to parse the distinction between the general meaning of hurt or loss and its legal use:

DAmmage , commeth of the french (dam) or (domage) signifiing generally any hurt or hinderance, that a man taketh in his estate: But in the com­mon lawe, it particularly signi­fieth a part of that the Iurours be to inquire of, passing for the plaintiffe or demandant in a ciuile action, be it personall or reall. For after verdict giuen of the principall cause, they are likewise asked their con­sciences touching costs (which be the charges of suite, called of the Civilians (expensæ litis) and dammages, which conteine the hindrance that the plaintiffe or demandant hath suffered by meanes of the wrong done to him by the defendant or tenent.

So in Cowell's explanation, damage generally refers to hurt or hindrance, whereas the legal damages are an estimate of the specific hindrance done to the plaintiff that the defendant may be liable to pay.

Answer 2

Congratulations on the work you have done to try to find the answer to your own question. Already you have some good answers from which to choose. This is not and attempt to provide a better one, but to set it in context if I can.

This kind of usage is not as surprising as it might seem. First, the French word dommage refers to any kind of disadvantage or ill that may be suffered. So, a French person used the comment "Dommage" in sympathy for almost anything that goes wrong: the equivalent to "What a pity!", or "Bad luck!".

In English, we do not use the word damage in quite that way in daily life. But we do in law. In civil law, claimants in claiming damages are claiming to have suffered some physical, material or mental 'harm' from the accused. Any such harm has to involve something provided for in law, of course. The harm, whatever it is, is caused a 'damage'. If plaintiffs want to be compensated, they have to prove that they have suffered a damage (or damages), for which they seek some form of compensation.

You could, if you wanted to, call this legal use of the word as a 'transferred epithet', where the word damages has been 'transferred from the actual damage to the compensation for it. Or you could say that it makes sense in the legal process it is simpler to use one word rather then two, and the preferred word referred to what all the arguments are about: the damages suffered.

Answer 3

There are several meanings for “damage”. The ones that concern your example are

(i) the damage done to something, and

(ii) the legal use in which the damages are compensation for hurt, injury, etc.

the suffix “-age”gives us a word that has split in its meaning.

OED

-age (suffix)

1. Forming nouns denoting something belonging or functionally related to what is denoted by the first element (and sometimes denoting the whole of a functional apparatus collectively), as leafage n., luggage n., roomage n., signage n., vaultage n., etc.

This covers the actual damage done to something

4. Forming nouns denoting a charge, tax, or duty levied on what is denoted by the first element, as ballastage n., housage n., poundage n., rowage n., etc.

This concerns damages as compensation. It should be borne in mind that if you break someone’s window, you cannot “pay them damages”, as the damages are only imposable by authority. What you do is pay them “for the damage”. Thus making the distinction above.

Thus “a damage” is an amount of money levied by a court or other authority on account of loss or injury: the first element being, as you point out: “Old French damage, domage "loss caused by injury" (12c., Modern French dommage), from dam "damage," from Latin damnum "loss, hurt, damage" (see damn).”

It is perhaps a linguistic coincidence that the word “damage” could so neatly fit into both categories.

The plural “damages” probably arose as a result of 12th century laws being written in Norman French, which did not see “damage” as an uncountable noun and in which “damages” were seen literally as injuries and losses and could have, within one case, different origins.

1430 Act 8 Hen. VI c. 9 Le pleyntif recovera ses damages au treble vers le defendant. [The plaintiff will recover three times his damages in a case against the defendant.]

However, the distinction was not as clear as it is today, and the singular often appeared in the legal sense:

a1538 T. Starkey Dial. Pole & Lupset (1989) 127 The party condemnyd..schold ever be awardyd to pay costys & al othur dammage cumyng to hys adversary by the reson of the unjust sute & vexatyon. [The party found liable should always pay the costs (of the trial) and all other damage that his opponent suffered through the unjust suit (that he brought) and the vexation (which it) caused.]

By the mid 18th century, the plural was firmly established by William Blackstone’s legal commentaries as compensation awarded.

1767 W. Blackstone Comm. Laws Eng. (new ed.) II. 438 When the jury has assessed his damages.

Answer 4

The legalese is a matter of orientation toward the party injured (in the object case), whereas "compensation" is subject-oriented. I suspect the usage first gained currency among lawyers in personal injury (plaintiff) practice. The word belongs in an everyday register, easily understood and is thus accessible and impactful, particularly laying focus on the suffering of the individual client (victim).