This appears to be an Anglo-Norman creation consisting of the prefix re- added to pendre¹strong>. While the Latin verb rependere was in use in Britain, and eventually generated the English verb repend v.2 in the second half of the sixteenth century, the sense of this verb was primarily financial, ‘to give in return or payment, or as a reward (for)’ while the Anglo-Norman verb retains the core sense of ‘to hang’.