scot-free

Someone on the news today was complaining that "President Trump is getting away scot-free too often." Nothing political here, but where did that word come from? It means doing something bad without suffering any consequences. 

Does “scot” have something to do with Scotland or someone named Scott? No, it seems to have come from Scandinavia and is rooted in the Old Norse language. That was the language across Scandinavia from roughly the 9th to 13th centuries. Around the 10th century, the word skot, meaning “payment,” made its way over to the British Isles, where it was anglicized as scot. 

It was used in Old English to mean the royal tax levied on locals, and this gave rise to the Old English term scotfreo, meaning “tax free.”

Moving from Old to Middle and then Modern English, the spelling changes, and so does the meaning. The OED shows several spellings from the 16th century: “scott fre” and “scotchfree” and the meaning became broader, meaning "to get away with anything.”

It would be unusual to hear it used today referring to taxes (though that might apply to Trump, too), and it is generally used in the sense of getting away with criminal or wrongful activity without punishment.