Historically, usury could mean any charging of interest, because many religious and moral traditions condemned lending money for profit. In modern usage, it usually refers to excessively high or illegal interest rates that exploit borrowers in financial need. In poetry, usury may symbolize greed, debt, social injustice, or the corruption of art and human relationships by profit.

The word comes from the Latin usura, meaning “use” or “interest paid for the use of money.” In medieval Christian thought, usury often meant any interest charged on a loan; later legal and economic usage narrowed it to unfairly high interest. Related terms include interest, debt, lending, credit, and predatory lending. When reading poems about usury, distinguish between criticism of exploitative financial practices and harmful stereotypes about particular groups. Pound’s treatment of usury, for example, is historically connected to his fascist and antisemitic ideas, which should be recognized and critically examined.