botleas

Learned borrowing from Old English bōtlēas (“unpardonable”). Doublet of bootless.

botleas (not comparable)

1. (Anglo-Saxon England, law, of a crime) Too grievous to be atoned for by the payment of a bōt or bōte; irredeemable, unpardonable.
   • 1991, Carla Ann Hage Johnson, “Entitled to Clemency: Mercy in the Criminal Law”, in Law and Philosophy, X, № 1 (February 1991), page 112:

     Persons guilty of the botleas crimes had no right to any particular punishment. Thus the convicted could not “complain if a foot was taken instead of his eyes, or if he was hanged instead of beheaded”.

• Seabolt, lobates, oblates, boatels, Lobatse, -betasol

From bōt +‎ -lēas.

• IPA^(key): /ˈboːtˌlæ͜ɑːs/

bōtlēas

1. bootless, unpardonable, what cannot be redeemed, recompensed or expiated by the payment of boot

• Middle English: boteles, botles, botelees, booteles, botelesse, bootles, butelesse
  • English: bootless
• → English: botleas

• Joseph Bosworth and T. Northcote Toller (1898) “bótleás”, in An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary‎, 2nd edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press.