If you’ve ever heard the word “milk” used in the sense of “milking someone” for a payment or a fine, it’s likely the intended word was “mulct.” Both “milk” and “mulct” appear in the Oxford English Dictionary with virtually identical definitions related to extracting payment, but “mulct” is about 100 years older. It comes from the Latin word “mulcta,” which means “a fine”; “mulct” can be used as a noun to designate a fine, or as a verb for the action of extracting the payment. “Milk” is still used in modern casual language, but now you know that “mulct” was the original version.